Theron's Third Grade Quiz

Now let's review.
Iraq MAY have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea MAY NOT have nuclear weapons but PROBABLY DOES.

Iraq MAY be able to make a nuclear bomb in a YEAR or two.
North Korea CAN make a bomb in a MONTH or two, and many more after that.

Iraq MAY provide nuclear technology to terrorists, if Iraq has it, which it PROBABLY DOES NOT.
North Korea WILL provide nuclear bombs TO ANYBODY WHO CAN PAY FOR THEM, and it DEFINITELY HAS NUCLEAR TECHNOLOGY.

Iraq has NOT threatened to use nuclear weapons.
North Korea HAS THREATENED to use nuclear weapons.

Iraq has NOT threatened to sell nuclear bombs to anybody.
North Korea HAS threatened to sell nuclear bombs to everybody.

So of course the United States is deeply and completely involved in stopping-which country?

Really?

Never mind.

Why?

by Phineas Dash

Why is he doing this? He is going to bomb Iraq, invade Iraq and now he has said he will occupy Iraq after Saddam is disposed of, until he is satisfied with a new government. He is going to do this with or without United Nations Security Council approval, with or without allies, with or without bases in Turkey or other help from governments in the region, and clearly without the approval of world opinion or the American people.

He is going to do this with few allies to share the costs, with no plans for how to pay for the costs, after telling the nation's governors already unable to pay for vital programs that they're on their own.

Instead he has made this invasion and occupation only the first step to transform the Middle East, and he justifies using this military power with a doctrine that suggests he will do it again repeatedly elsewhere in the world, to destroy governments he feels may threaten American security, and/or to replace them with democracies, as he defines the term.

Why?

As head of the Dash Brothers philosophy department, it is left to me to attempt an answer.

Every matter of importance, as Scott Peck points out, is overdetermined---it always has more than one cause. If the question is why the Bush administration is doing this, the well documented close ties of VP Cheney and other administration powers to oil and other corporations that stand to profit has to be part of the answer. The foreign policy pronounced and military strategies discussed are generally the work of exactly the same Republicans who first tasted power in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and were devised partly in their years of bitter exile during the Clinton administration. On the economic side, crippling the federal government was part of the Reagan agenda, and led in part to the lack of oversight that permitted corporate highway robbery, and the privatizing of public services that's led to more highway robbery.

But I suspect that when we come to George Bush himself, there's something else going on. His basic personality was there for all to see during the campaign: the skilled extravert, the easy manipulator, the salesman; emotionally immature, intellectually unskilled and undeveloped, with an overriding assumption of entitlement. He's the CEO as PR man. He was dangerous mostly for the people he would return to power. That, of course, was plenty dangerous.

But his "vision" was pretty much what a recent Doonesbury comic described: "no sex in the Oval Office." Then came 9-11, and I'm convinced I saw the moment of his transformation on live TV. He was standing on the rubble at the World Trade Center. He looked uncertain, uncomfortable. He started to speak to those who were still sifting through the wreckage. He didn't start well. Then he realized that some couldn't hear him. And he made a joke, something to the effect that the people who did this would soon be hearing America clearly. He got a rousing cheer. It surprised him. But that was it---that was the moment. G.W. found a purpose.

I'm only guessing, of course. I have no idea what latent beliefs this moment helped to galvanize. But this is my speculation: he became a true believer. He likes talking tough, and getting admired for being a strong leader. But he seems to believe this: that the United States is the salvation of the world, and its military might is the instrument of that salvation. I doubt that anyone around him is telling him anything different. You da man, is more like what he's hearing.

An extravert who is not a thinking person is easy prey to becoming convinced by a single simple belief, and becoming fixated on it, and finding clarity and purpose in it. Jungians point out that we’re most vulnerable at our weakest point, what they call our inferior function. It’s why thinking people get done in by sex, for example. People who don’t have a lot of thinking skills get done in by Big Ideas that make them feel smart and above all, right.

There are those who support this administration, and I would guess some who are in this administration, with a related motivation: they believe that the moment of apocalypse is at hand, that the final battle of good and evil will take place in the Middle East. The land now within the borders of Iraq is fraught with significance in the pre-history of humanity, especially for adherents of the desert religions: Christians, Muslims and Jews. Their mythologies dominate the cultures now in contention. The fact that the most contentious and extreme wings of each of these religions is currently in power in nations or regions armed to the teeth lends some credence to this apocalyptic scenario. (Of course, they may all be trumped by North Korea, now threatening nuclear holocaust in their part of the world. They are a little paranoid about being attacked by the U.S. I wonder where they got that idea.)

There are apparently some who expect this definitive showdown in the erstwhile Holy Land, and assume that in the end they'll be the ones who are saved, because they are the right and the righteous. I don't know if G.W. Bush's conservative Christian beliefs go that far. But to describe his speech last week as messianic, and to describe the Bush administration foreign policy as evangelical (as a Frontline program recently did), seems to be part of the answer.

It may be that Bush himself, along with the evangelical right, believes this to be a moral crusade, for which they are willing to spill the blood of everybody but themselves. The political right, some of whom are surely believers in a Christian mission or an apocalyptic showdown, or both, is not given to charitable behavior. Their scorn and hatred for anyone opposing them has no visible restraint; it's become part of their game. They find the moral absolutes congenial, especially those which justify immoral, unethical behavior, as well as behavior antithethical to civilized democracy. Bush can talk grandly about overcoming the evildoers. The ideological footsoldiers can handle the dirty tricks and character assassinations.

The Cheney faction may or may not believe any of the theology, but they don't have to. It works to their advantage, since they apparently believe this war will make them money, though I find it difficult to credit their judgment or even their sanity on that score.

Maybe it's still sinking in, that the vision described in Bush's speech to an ideological right wing audience went beyond the "nation-building" he once decried, to become the announcement of American empire-building.

At least this much has been clarified: UN inspection, even coupled with more limited military options, was never seriously considered as a solution because disarming Iraq was never the complete goal. Taking over Iraq is the goal that Bush and Cheney agree on. Bush may be naïve enough to believe the American Empire will only be a temporary necessity, and democracy will bloom once that damn satanic Saddam is gone to hell.

At the moment that the right wingnuts are vilifying the French for daring to question the Bush delusions, Jonathan Schell points out in Harper's that the nations of "Old Europe," which immolated themselves for the first half of the twentieth century in the World War, parts I and II, are now becoming a single peaceful political unit. We should be celebrating and studying what they have accomplished, instead of demeaning them and ourselves.

Old Europe is dealing with mixed races, clashing cultures and classes, economic challenges, and pretty much everything America has to deal with. But they're facing up to environmental challenges, not denying them. They're trying to solve social problems, not hide them. They have far less violent crime, despite the fact that in order to be allowed into the European Union, a country cannot have capital punishment. In standing up to the military and economic colossus of the world, France and Germany are acting with far greater courage than the political lackeys feeding off the ill gotten gains of rich corporations, the radio-inflamed bigmouths of America, safe in their righteousness and cynicism, far from harms way.

Zealots have been stopped short of causing absolute catastrophe in recent decades by those who asserted the primacy of political calculation. That's not happening this time, at least not so far. The political will necessary to sustain a long war, or even a long, costly and bloody empire-building occupation, does not exist. The economics of a costly war and occupation in a recession, with the government proposing to raise less money than it raises now, make no sense. There is no moral consensus that the announced ends of this war will justify the death and destruction it will cause. There is no general agreement that this war will effect those ends, or even that those ends are the war's real purpose. There is no moral consensus that this kind of war to prevent the possibility of being attacked is moral. Some people still believe that the question is whether the war is necessary, and they mostly don't believe that it is.

It may be that Americans are waking up to the fact that this is not just another reality TV show. Right now President Bush's poll rating is more than 10 points lower than President Clinton's was when he was being impeached.

Maybe the Canadian compromise will slow them down, but it's not likely. All we can hope for is that our system is resilient enough to survive until regime change can be effected in 2004, in Washington.

Antidotes to Terror

by Theron Dash


These are not easy days to live in America, as we wonder what sort of storm this is the calm before. War in the land beloved of apocalyptics, for certain. Slow strangulation of public services and further squeeze in the economy very likely. But what about terror-that is, the kind we associate with terrorist evildoers? The kind we were once told we were at war with?

Two impressions are finally beginning to penetrate the American consciousness, and they aren't pretty: that the commencement of the Iraq invasion is probably a signal for terrorist acts to begin, and we in America are woefully, inexcusably unprepared.

Last week the PBS series "Nova" ran back to back hours on dirty bombs and on biological weapons. Apart from this maddening trend of repeating every fact two or three times in a row, these were reasonable treatments on origins, the nature of the problems and relative risks such weapons pose. Even so, they aren't easy to watch. (I haven't even gotten through the whole biological weapons hour.) But it seems at least the dirty bomb threat could be greatly minimized by more attention to detection and to preparation. The technology to detect radioactive material is available. And the most severe effects of a dirty bomb would be the terror that explodes in a panicked and unprepared population.

These programs aired when America was supposed at a high state of alert, and it was quite clear that nobody really knows what that means, or what they are supposed to do about it. The information that came from the federal government is already a well-known joke. Duct tape became a punch line.

Then it snowed in Washington. Again. And again a snowstorm pretty much paralyzed the nation's capital. Let's not even mention for the moment that such freakish weather suggests the climate crisis is already having consequences. (And yes, just because they call it global warming doesn't mean the effects are sometimes going to be unusual cold.) But it didn't pass unnoticed that a city supposedly on alert for terrorist catastrophe couldn't even handle a little bad weather.

None of this exactly inspires confidence, does it? In most places, local governments are probably the best prepared for known threats and disasters, though they complain that the resources and funding promised them for terrorism preparations has never materialized. What about information delivery? We're largely dependent on local media for emergency information that is necessarily local. That's not very comforting. In many places, there is less in the way of news media that is truly local. Many if not most radio and TV stations, and even newspapers, are mostly just a transfer point for whatever their absent corporate owners supply in bulk. Few radio stations even have a news staff anymore, and local television stations don't have the numbers of reporters with the kind of training and experience that they used to. Even five years ago there were still (barely) enough seasoned newspeople working at TV stations in large to medium sized cities to rise to the occasion of emergencies. I doubt that's true now.

If we have to rely on the kind of people I see on Fox and other cable "news" stations, we're better off on our own. All they will transmit is panic, because all they transmit now is anger, silliness, idiocy and fear.

Of course a terrorist attack on the electronic infrastructure would make that moot anyway.

As for our federal leaders...You'd think that by now, the President or somebody would have gone on TV and said: Here are the basic possibilities for terrorist attacks. Here's what we are doing to keep it from happening. But if it occurs, here's what might happen, and here's what you should do. Here's who will be in charge. Here's what you and your family, your neighbors, your town, your county, can do to prepare.

For example, this is what a dirty bomb is and what it does (a small explosion can set off radiation that can eventually cause cancers.) We can detect radiation, and we've deployed this many thousands of detection units. We aren't going to say where they are, but we can tell you that some will be concentrated all the time at high risk places, and others will move around general public places.

This is the kind of thing you would expect leaders to do. It's what President Kennedy would have done, or President Eisenhower. Or President Ford or President Carter. In fact I expect that it's what every single president in my lifetime would have done, with the exception of presidents named Bush. (Reagan would have wanted to, but I'm not sure his people would have let him, since an awful lot of them are running the government now.)

But it hasn't been done, and the American people have not demanded, have not even asked, that it be done. Is it just that we don't want to think about it? Do we trust our Washington leaders so much, or so little? Do we have such absolute confidence in them, or maybe we can't face our suspicions that nobody there has their eye on the ball?

Do they in Washington have so little confidence in ordinary people? Maybe they didn't notice who took care of things on 9/11/01.

Some are starting to call this government to account for its lack of preparation. But what if it is intentional? What if America remains vulnerable to another terrorist attack, not just by default but by design?

I know this sounds paranoid. Pretty soon I'll be having delusions that our leaders are committing this nation to a long costly holy war while cutting taxes on the very wealthy and bankrupting the public sector simultaneously. But look at what happened after 9-11. Look at how easily this administration took absolute power, trashed civil liberties and used that crisis to pursue a radical foreign policy it essentially designed half a decade or more ago.

They were able to do this because people were shocked and they were scared. If in the many months since then, Americans had been actively involved in preparing to handle emergencies caused by terrorist acts (as opposed to either turning in suspicious looking foreigners or forgetting the whole thing and going shopping), then the level of fear would have diminished. Because we wouldn't feel so vulnerable to attack and helpless if it happens.

But as Michael Moore and others have pointed out, fear sells. News media use fear to capture viewers, ratings, advertising. Politicians use fear to raise money, motivate votes and now, perhaps, to enact an agenda for their own ends.

And fear will be used again, I fear. To keep that proven weapon in the arsenal could even be why so little has been done to prepare the country for terrorist threats, other than to color code them.

If the Iraq invasion does signal a successful act of terror, that fear will come in handy to solidify support for the war that is losing credibility by the minute, all over the world.

But maybe at least we can be prepared for that possibility-not just of terrorism, but of the use of terrorism for political ends. And if we just imagine that such manipulation might be coming---though of course it's really too paranoid to contemplate as a real possibility---we might know it when we see it. And we won't get fooled again.

There are lots of reasons why terrorist acts are terrifying. But one way to lessen their terror somewhat is to domesticate them by looking at prevention and response as problems of organization, participation and action. Many of us live in parts of America that are prone to one natural disaster or another: to earthquakes or tornadoes, floods or fires. They are all scary. Some of them can happen without warning, and most of them can be as devastating as 9/11 in terms of lives lost, buildings destroyed, and trauma to families as well as the civic infrastructure.

But all we can do is prepare as best we can, as individuals, families, neighborhoods, civic entities. And we do so with a sense of balance. We know that thousands might die in an earthquake. But we know that millions do die in car accidents, so we have to think about safety and sobriety. We know that hundreds of millions do die every year of preventable cancers, and many hundreds of millions around the world die of easily preventable diseases. We can't become obsessed with any one problem or prospect, and we can't become so obsessed with preventing or preparing for disasters that we no longer live; nor can we ignore them. Then we are easy prey for fear.

If we thought the same way about terrorism-especially if we would work together to address the problems that might arise-terrorism might lose enough of its terror to be dealt with as you'd expect a generally wealthy, healthy and educated citizenry of human beings should approach its challenges.

All War All the Time

by Theron Dash

Remember when...? Watching the purple city through infrared night cameras, as the scuds fell, the scud-busters rose and supposedly destroyed them? (It turns out they didn't but it was a good show anyway.)

And the interview in a bunker in Israel or somewhere, when word comes that a scud attack is imminent, and both female interviewer and male interviewee don gas masks, and when nothing much happens and there's only dead air, they continue the interview without taking off the masks? And sound just as cheesy as before, except slightly muffled?

Yeah, well you can bet they remember every thrilling moment at CNN. It was the height of their glory, when Sadamm and George Bush the First both watched them to see what the hell was going on. So did everybody else. The Gulf War made CNN into the global news network.

So it's little wonder that the prospect of Gulf War II has them salivating. CNN has fallen on hard times. They managed to outgun a couple of competitors though they felt some heat during the Get Clinton hysteria, but Fox News comes equipped with Murdoch long range missiles and satellites and stuff. Suddenly Fox is riding high and CNN decides to compete by getting rid of its actual reporters and filling the air with airheads like Rudi Bactiar, who smile winsomely at all the science news they don't understand, and emote appropriately for the sad stories, by at least the third time they report them. Never has a universally watched network become unwatchable so quickly. And especially unlistenable--those awful perky singsongs. But then, they all are now.

Strident Fox, the network of ugly white guys getting rich fawning over already rich stupid white men, with a few token easily outraged girl Fridays, except they aren't smart enough to be Fridays, they're more like Tuesdays. (Of course they have a few good folks. They all have a few good folks.) But they've got their niche---shameless radio call-in ranting with smirking faces! Manufactured conflict! What could be better?

Only one answer: a war. Boom, boom, cry, cry, hooray hooray.
So big surprise that CNN has been camped on an aircraft carrier for the last three months, panting for a war it can cover with minicams: the rockets red glare, the bombs bursting in air, now the Gulf War II logo and the flag is still there! And live remotes with the authentic three second delay, even if the reporter stud or babe is in a hotel room. I love how TV news makes up "live" "remotes," like when the anchor says, let's go live to Jack Ace, live in our newsroom for a live update. And you see Jack, who is actually about fifty feet away, with his jacket off, looking all earnest and sweaty. Potent stuff.

And even less of a surprise that CNN (along with NBC and Fox) refused to run anti-war ads---slickly made, with celebs and legitimate product spokespersons like major clergy, and with cash in hand to pay the same price for the time as Budwiser or the Republican National Committee would. CNN made up a policy on the spot: "we do not accept international advocacy ads on regions in conflict." Region? Conflict? Either that leaves out exactly no region I know of (not even northwest Antarctica) or CNN is breaking the story---It's war! It's war! CNN is going to war!

Oh the nostalgia, oh the ambition, to recapture lost glory and save the collapsing Time-Warner-AOL empire! Yes, it's the empire strikes back, in more ways than one!

Tune in, America, it's all war, all the time! Peace is way too boring, not even our perky anchors can distract you from the foaming at the mouth over at Fox. And the beauty of it is, CNN has more footage of Gulf War I than anybody else. Show it again, Sam! Who'll know the difference! Un-mothball the Scud Stud! Bring back the good old days!

Milky Way Week in Review

With the Dash Brothers

PHINEAS
Welcome to Milky Way Week in Review. The name refers to the galactic rather than the gastronomic level of existence.

MORGAN
Maybe to emphasize that the world doesn't begin and end in Washington.

THERON
Well, it might end in Washington.

PHINEAS
Point taken. Let's move on. I'm your host, Phineas Dash, and around the table are distinguished experts on everything, which of course doesn't distinguish them from anybody else---my brothers, Theron, Phineas and Christopher. Gabriel is off consulting with his muse.

CHRISTOPHER
He's asleep.

PHINEAS
That's what I said.
So let's start with a roundup of the good news. Just when we thought the whole country was asleep---

MORGAN
We get maybe half a million protestors in Washington, and another 150,000 or more in San Francisco, plus significant gatherings in a number of other cities in the U.S. and around the world. It turns out that three-quarters of the American people are against attacking Iraq and want to let the inspections option play out.

CHRISTOPHER
Then the French government made a strong statement that they'd veto a UN authorization for an attack in the Security Council. Most of the other members are against it as well. There was a trans-Atlantic huff over the Secretary of Defense referring to the French and Germans as "old Europe," sort of too over the hill to fight, I guess. That wasn't nearly as provocative as the guy the defense department sent to represent them on the PBS News Hour, who said flatly that the French and Germans are irrelevant, that they have no power in the world. Only the Brits count.
And though the British people feel about this impending war about as the American public does, their government is sticking with the Bushies.

THERON
Did you see Tony Blair on C-Span the other day? Appearing at parliament in this weird pale green shirt and patterned tie of the same color? He looked like he was auditioning to play Dr. Who.

PHINEAS
And just when you thought the American press had definitively rolled over, or bent over, we get a firebrand going after the White House.

CHRISTOPHER
Yes, and who should this brash, impudent and insolent purveyor of non-minced words be but eighty-two year old Helen Thomas, who has covered more presidents than anybody else---and she really loathes this one.
Helen had been the definition of the nondescript scribe---a wire service reporter---but she's become a columnist, and she's like a Phoenix rising from the ashes and being let out of her cage. "I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter," she said recently. "Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'

The neat thing is that with her seniority she still starts the White House press conference questioning. We've got a taste of what that's been like recently, direct from the official transcripts. Who wants to do Helen?

THERON
I'll be Ari Fleischer.

CHRISTOPHER
The White House Press Secretary. Okay, here it is:

MR. FLEISCHER: Good afternoon and happy New Year to everybody. The President began his day with an intelligence briefing, followed by an FBI briefing. Then he had a series of policy briefings. And this afternoon, the President will look forward to a Cabinet meeting where the President will discuss with members of his Cabinet his agenda for the year. The President is going to focus on economic growth, making America a more compassionate country, and providing for the security of our nation abroad and on the homefront.
And with that, I'm more than happy to take your questions. Helen.

Q At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up.

MR. FLEISCHER: I refer specifically to a horrible terrorist attack on Tel Aviv that killed scores and wounded hundreds. And the President, as he said in his statement yesterday, deplores in the strongest terms the taking of those lives and the wounding of those people, innocents in Israel.

Q My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, the question is how to protect Americans, and our allies and friends --

Q They're not attacking you.

MR. FLEISCHER: -- from a country --

Q Have they laid the glove on you or on the United States, the Iraqis, in 11 years?

MR. FLEISCHER: I guess you have forgotten about the Americans who were killed in the first Gulf War as a result of Saddam Hussein's aggression then.

Q Is this revenge, 11 years of revenge?

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, I think you know very well that the President's position is that he wants to avert war, and that the President has asked the United Nations to go into Iraq to help with the purpose of averting war.

Q Would the President attack innocent Iraqi lives?

MR. FLEISCHER: The President wants to make certain that he can defend our country, defend our interests, defend the region, and make certain that American lives are not lost.

Q And he thinks they are a threat to us?

MR. FLEISCHER: There is no question that the President thinks that Iraq is a threat to the United States.

Q The Iraqi people?

MR. FLEISCHER: The Iraqi people are represented by their government. If there was regime change, the Iraqi --

Q So they will be vulnerable?

MR. FLEISCHER: Actually, the President has made it very clear that he has not dispute with the people of Iraq. That's why the American policy remains a policy of regime change. There is no question the people of Iraq --

Q That's a decision for them to make, isn't it? It's their country.

MR. FLEISCHER: Helen, if you think that the people of Iraq are in a position to dictate who their dictator is, I don't think that has been what history has shown.

Q I think many countries don't have -- people don't have the decision -- including us.



PHINEAS
Now that's entertainment! So what's the consequence of all this going to be?

THERON
On the war? Probably none. The troops are there, the weather's right, the moon will be dark, CNN has taken up residence on aircraft carriers, and Bush's poll numbers are starting to tank. So sooner rather than later. The ides of March is still a safe bet.

MORGAN
I agree. What has changed is the prospects for Bush in Congress, and especially the '04 election. Once again, arrogance is going to be the Republican downfall. They're pushing a radical right agenda on every conceivable front, and though they're likely to do a lot of collateral damage, they're also getting the opposition's full attention.

Democratic candidates are already campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire. Nobody is sounding like a Bush clone anymore. The Bush agenda is going to get critiqued from several points of view-the primary debate is probably the healthiest thing about this process.

CHRIS
I heard bits of some of the Iowa speeches. Strong words, strong proposals, clear language for the most part. And ideas. Changes of direction. Kerry invokes the Kennedys---it's interesting how he's challenging his own generation to get involved again. That could be a potent argument---the baby boomers are still a huge generation, and a relatively high proportion of the older half are known voters.

THERON
Was it Kerry or somebody else who proposed a kind of senior Peace Corps? Man, every American I know whose been in another country recently has had a real hard time. They're getting abused. It's more than just tourist inconvenience. There's real prejudice. It's like a lot of old anger is just letting loose, thanks to the Bushies. And I'm not talking about the Middle East. I mean Australia. I mean Switzerland.

MORGAN
I think maybe I'd still volunteer to help the cafes of Paris reclaim their former glory. Or Turino even.

THERON
You'd go that far? What a patriot!

PHINEAS
So-anything else happening in the Milky Way?

THERON
Jerry Springer may run for the U.S. Senate. I wish that was a joke.

CHRIS
What's going on with TV documentaries? Why do they repeat the same point over and over? I thought attention span was a problem. I feel like I'm being bludgeoned.

MORGAN
You're talking about that "Journey of Man" thing on PBS the other night.

CHRIS
The latest example, yes. Lots of long lingering shots of blond, boyishly handsome Dr. Spencer Wells, and every single point repeated at least three times in succession, and frequent recaps of the repetitions. How dumbed down can you get? But the story---if you can ever get to it---is absolutely fascinating: the attempt to trace early human migration from Africa throughout the world by following genetic markers. All the wonder of it, utterly smashed by the mind-numbing prattle, repeated and repeated and repeated. For two endless hours!

THERON
Not enough time for any counter-evidence, I noticed. Or any contrary opinions on the migrations. Seems that guy solved the whole thing all by himself. And his personal cameraperson.

MORGAN
It's the same effect as commercials, isn't it? There are so many ad messages now, a half dozen of them one after the other, that you completely lose the thread of the main program. By the time it comes back on, who cares?

CHRIS
Kiss dramatic tension goodbye.

PHINEAS
Speaking of which, I'll bet you can't wait till next week's edition of the Milky Way Review.

THERON
I can.

PHINEAS
Be kind to each other, will you? And goodbye out there.

Last Days in the Kennels for The Dogs of War

by Theron Dash

Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry 'Havoc', and let slip the dogs of war.
Julius Caesar III, 1
- William Shakespeare


In yet another example of accidental intelligence, the Bushies managed to make the war they haven't launched yet into boring old news. The American attention span having already been exhausted by the heavy fever in the fall, it's as if it all happened already and we're on to the next thing. But it hasn't happened; this is the last lull before what could be the perfect storm. And it's coming.

Come the Ides of March, the dogs of war will be frothing at the mouth all over the Gulf region and the Middle East, and who knows where else. There are too many weapons, too much anger and ambition, and warfare feeds on itself, the frenzy trumps judgment and overrides other considerations. When the biggest bully on the planet is talking the talk and bombing the bombs, everybody gets permission to cry havoc---which in Shakespeare's time meant to fight until you've destroyed everyone and everything.

There will be valiant headlines, and there will be excitedly portentous news voices and endless speedfreak telexpert chatter, and once it's over, if it ever is, we'll find out what really happened in a few months or a decade or pretty much never.

At first we'll get the pretty stuff---the war is hell if hell is a good slasher movie stuff---but some collateral damage will seep in. There's a story today about American military pilots in Afghanistan being pressured to take amphetamines, making them a bit trigger happy when they mistook Canadians for al Qaeda, or maybe for zombies from the stratosphere. An Air Force spokesperson referred to the "Go pills" as a "fatigue management tool." That speed makes folks meaner than a junkyard dog, as the saying goes, is pretty much common knowledge, and doubtless hasn't escaped the notice of the dogs of war.

We're already hearing the fears of veterans of the first Bushie Gulf War that this time, like that time, all the nice smart bombs acting just like video games on TV will distract from the massive equipment failures and shoddiness, like gas masks that don't work, that harmed the unknown soldiers of that desert storm. Then there's the Gulf War Syndrome, until recently classified as a mental illness suffered by low class recruits and news directors during sweeps periods. Now it turns out that all those people really did get awfully sick, probably from chemical exposure. Whether all the energy and money expended on denying the problem existed hampered efforts to solve it for the next batch of cannon & chemical fodder is something we'll just have to wait and see, if we ever find out at all.

Soldiers have been killed, maimed and sickened in all modern wars because of shoddiness by suppliers and by the screwups of the military machine, the ambitions of politicians and generals and other careerists. Maybe you won't read that in the latest gauzy nostalgia about the Greatest Generation, but look at some closer to contemporary and closer to the ground accounts of World War II and it's there in abundance. Soldiers come home cynical not only because of all the carnage they've witnessed. There are veterans who never saw combat at all whose memories are bitter, and who also don't like to remember or talk about it.

One of AmericanSamizat's international correspondents sent along a report from the Guardian that also quotes a Newsweek story, concerning America's 82nd Airborne division in Afghanistan. After coming under heavy unanticipated fire and suffering losses probably because some of their Afghan allies betrayed them, the 82nd went on a scorched earth rampage through villages. One military observer bypassed Vietnam to go back to the Mexican war for a comparable wave of destruction. As far as I know, not much has been made of this on U.S. media. But then, it's more fun to take pictures on an aircraft carrier.

This war is particularly inflammatory because the bar has been set so low on why it's going to be fought. The official reasons, that is. Now anybody who thinks somebody else is evil, or is afraid somebody else will get bigger and better weapons, or is preparing weapons that might someday threaten them, even if they are preparing them with such intense secrecy that foreigners trained to detect them can't find much of a trace so far, well--that's good enough to start a war that will costs millions of dollars and many lives, though a lot of those will belong to people who won't be counted in death any better than they counted in life.

But of course everybody in the world knows the real reason, and so twenty-first century enlightened America endorses one of the chief motives for war of the 10 thousand years of so-called civilization: greed. Great to see we've come so far.

Once it gets going, war is a disease epidemic. People who think of themselves as normal do incredibly awful things for what seems like rational reasons. They put themselves, or are put into situations where they will kill anyone and destroy anything that seems to threaten their lives or the lives of their buddies, and pretty soon anything that threatens their military careers or their honorable discharge. Meanwhile, people who find themselves surrounded by war will fight back, and some will attack anybody they have a grudge against-or have had a grudge against in the last five thousand years---regardless. Permission has been granted by the dogs of war, and the international arms industry---including the good old USA's---have supplied them with the teeth and the jaws and the claws.

Why is it that every generation has to learn all this for themselves?

The Big Dogs Won't Hunt

Some things on the Homefront are apt to be predictable---the increase in latitude for government intrusions and the increase in intolerance for dissent, the viciousness with which dissenters are attacked and peace advocates are insulted for being wusses or (worse) liberal-humanists---but other aspects could be different. Modern industrialized war used to stimulate the domestic economy, but it's not clear that will happen this time, even if the fighting spreads and is prolonged. Postmodern war might have the same effect as other prosperous postmodern economic engines: it might make an obscene amount of money for very few, and subtract from most everybody else.

Catching bits and pieces of end of the year economic news over the holiday left a nagging impression that the world economy is in much more precarious condition than the daily surprise ups and downs news of the media would indicate (all those chirpy anchors who are surprised by everything, but in a good chirpy way).

In the U.S., governor after governor began the year talking about budget shortfalls. How the states got into so much debt after half a decade of boom is amazing, especially since the Bushies weren't in charge of all of them. State and local government is a major economic force in many places, particularly the most vulnerable. And it is there---in programs for the poor, sick, undereducated, elderly and rural---that corporate big city fat cat lobbyist-conscious pols are going to go for their cuts. In terms of the economy the effectiveness of these cuts will all be cosmetic and psychological, if you believe that big business has anything sophisticated enough to be called a psyche. But in terms of people's lives, the local economies and the economy in general, the effects will be 100% bad.

We're also beginning to see just how weakened many megacorporations were by the stock market crashes (that everybody who plays Lotto knew were coming but apparently investors have their own version of war fever) and their stupid investments and greedy takeovers. With not so much available cash, with debts for stock and ownership in worthless companies accompanied by their own debt, they are becoming increasingly demanding. They're demanding you had over your money to them. Just don't ask for much in return. In fact, in certain industries, you'd better not ask for anything.

The computer industry leads the way in the consumer field. They may be tapdancing now, but the customer still isn't getting much of a break. They've "upgradeable" a joke. Buy a new machine every few months or forget it. And software? Hey-Microsoft has a profit margin of 85% on Windows and 78% for Office. That's the cost of business.

But even Microsoft can't hold a candle to the insurance industry. They demand 100% profit, minus costs for envelopes and stamps (all deductible, though). If you dare to make a claim, they are highly insulted. They up your premium or they inform you that you no longer will enjoy the privilege of sending them your money and getting nothing in return. You'll have to burn it in your own fireplace.

Too bad it isn't that easy. Make a claim on your car insurance, or even if somebody else makes a claims on theirs for damage in accident that was their fault but you were involved---it don't matter, your car insurance premium goes up. But if you want to drive a car, you are required to carry insurance.

Homeowners in California and I assume elsewhere find that if they make an ordinary claim they risk losing their home insurance, and thanks to computer databases, they are likely to be refused by every other insurance carrier in the galaxy. (Maybe they'll be taken on as a "high risk," and honored with tripled premiums or worse). If nobody will insure their house, they can't even sell it. This is pretty serious. For the vast majority of Americans with any equity, it's almost all in their homes. It's their material wealth, their economic stability. Unless of course they lose their jobs for a long time, then it won't matter.

At least one of these insurance companies (State Farm) says it can't insure homes in California because it loses money here. Turns out that State Farm lost a bundle on the stock market and on acquisitions. Somebody has to pay for those mistakes, and it ain't going to be the folks who made them. Call it the fortunes of war.

Gored

Al Gore has decided not to be a candidate for president in 2004 and who can blame him. The psychotic radical right media, which apparently owns cable news, talk radio and so-called conservative think tanks as well as the religious right, has relentlessly ridiculed him, making him their heir to Bill Clinton. Apparently Gore has few friends in the so-called establishment press, so the radical right drumbeat echoes through other coverage.

If the polls are an indication of anything but the echoes of news coverage, voters have taken their anger and shame over the 2000 elections out on Gore, the victim of that shameful absurdity, rather than Bush, who as president became the country's designated father figure, quickly enabled by fear and war fever.

Never mind that Gore is the only major Democrat to oppose war in Iraq in no uncertain terms; that he has outed the psychotic radical right media, come out boldly for a single-payer national health care plan, and has strongly opposed Bush's suicidal economic and environmental policies.

The people who thought and still think that there is no essential difference between a President Gore and a President G.W. Bush are fools. Even those in the immediate post-9/11 days were reverently whispering that maybe Bush was meant to be, are seriously deficient in judgment. The idea that Gore wouldn't have handled himself well, or guided the country to a much more effective response to terrorism with much less threat to domestic rights, is dumb and insulting to Gore. Maybe he doesn't have the fratcharm aplomb of Bush, and the nation is often more comfortable with the dumb regular guy than somebody who might know something, but we would be so much better off right now with President Gore that our situation amounts to yet another national tragedy.

Gore didn't run a good campaign, he squandered his political capital and he's paying the price. But it turns out that the thrust of his campaign, which struck people as odd in such flush times, was just ahead of its time. He talked about fighting for working and middle class Americans because he knew that even in the Clinton years they were the ones left out and left behind, along with the working poor and the unable to work poor. The Clinton prosperity had to be extended, and Act II---the Gore presidency---would use the hard-won benefits of budget surplus to make up those social deficits, to strengthen Social Security, to adjust welfare reforms now that many of its premises and provisions have proven to be delusional, and by now to lead the charge for national health care, among other needful things.

People didn't understand this all that well in 2000, and Gore didn't do a great job of explaining it---and probably the press did its usual poor job of communicating what he did say. Only the president---and only occasionally---gets to have what he says simply reported, and then commented on. What everybody else says (and what the president says most of the time) is packaged by news show biz interpretations, and most of the substance is left out.

But the Bushies understood it, so the first thing they did was vaporize the surplus with tax cuts for the already deliriously and shamefully wealthy, and more military spending. So now it seems they can't do anything but privatize the public sector, so people can pay even more in fees than in taxes in order to benefit lobbyists, advertisers, accountants and lawyers specializing in takeovers and corporate consolidation, just to have expensive and bad health care, and expensive and bad schools and so on. And they can turn their social security checks into lotto cards playing the stock market.

So for 2004, candidates can do worse than resurrect some of Gore's 2000 phrases and speeches, because it's becoming obvious who is getting gored by the current administration.

You Never Know: A Response

by Phineas Dash

My brother Theron vented spleen on the outcome of the midterm elections, a family custom. (See below: 11/6/2002) I offer not a rejoinder exactly, because mostly I agree with his point of view, but a response of a more philosophical tenor.

While attempting to minimize their official gloating in the intervening time since the election, the Bushies have nevertheless begun to spend the spin capital of their alleged victory of ideas, as well as use the perception of elected power to quietly push their agenda. This is just as dangerous as Theron said, insidiously so since a lot of it is relatively subtle. Still, San Francisco columnist Jon Carroll caught on to the implications of a Bushie proposal to take control of the dissemination of federal government information from the Government Printing Office and give it to the politically controlled cabinet agencies: even technical information will be subject to censorship and spin. It's likely the public never would have seen the recent report on global warming that "the bureaucracy" produced, because it contradicts the Bush line.

Several columnists and newspapers have also caught the biggest move the Bushies are making, without official accountability to anyone: by administrative fiat, they are instantly destroying the jobs of more than three quarters of a million federal civil service workers, a bold and insidious slaughter in their ongoing class war. In the guise of privatizing for efficiency, they will further cripple the federal government---good for corporations that don't like being regulated---and ensure that these functions (for they aren't getting rid of the tasks, just the people doing them) will be performed less efficiently by lower paid workers, without the benefits and status and above all, job security of the civil service, since that would conflict with the Bushies' political agendas. It's what we're going to get more of: politicizing the government, centralizing the control, class warfare.

The Homeland Security act is rife with special interest provisions benefiting corporations and limiting the public's ability to get information about the government (by negating Freedom of Information Act rights) while it increases government's ability to get, organize and store information about the public. This is "less government"? This is Big Brother.

Last year a Hollywood film ("The Majestic") was able to rewrite the history of the 1950s so that a falsely accused screenwriter could tell off the House UnAmerican Activities committee and the public automatically saw that the injustices of the McCarthy/Hollywood Blacklist were themselves un-American violations of liberty. Don't you think that actual Hollywood screenwriters tried to make that speech at the time? It got them jail time for contempt, and a vast chilly silence from the public. Well, it's happening again--there are already blacklists relating to supposed terrorists making the rounds, denying people their rights, getting them fired or not hired, getting them tossed off airplanes, etc. The lists are full of mistakes but since nobody knows who really compiled them, there's nobody to talk to about correcting them--same as in the fifties. The difference is that everything is computerized and the lists are all over the place. And this is just the beginning...

It's supposed to be for the war on terrorism but just how sincere that is could be seen on Bill Moyers' "Now" (in a report by San Francisco's KQED)that blew the whistle on John Ashcroft for contorting the law in contradiction to his own Justice Department so he could meet the demands of the National Rifle Association. While proposing that virtually all personal information of all citizens be open to scrutiny by Homeland Security, he steadfastly denies the FBI access to current federal records on gun purchases. To fight the war on terrorism, apparently the FBI needs to know what books you take out of the library, but not who is illegally buying hundreds of assault weapons at gun shows.

So I don't dissent from Theron on the Bushie Republicans and their radical fundamentalist reactionary agenda. However I would like to offer some rays of hope on the Democrats.

The day after the election, Richard Gephardt fell on his sword and resigned as the House Democratic leader. It's the best thing that could have happened, next to Tom Daschle also resigning as Senate leader. These guys aren't dishonorable men, but their leadership has led down a dishonorable path. Gephardt's move signals that the Democrats have recognized their strategy's failure.

The House Democrats then elected Nancy Pelosi as their leader. Both before and after her election, she said that Democrats have to state their positions more clearly, especially their differences with the Republicans. When news surfaced that Hilary Rodham Clinton was likely to be asked to join the Senate leadership, she said pretty much the same thing. This is as close as politicians will get to saying that the era of big cowardice is over.

We'll see. But if there is any immediate hope in the Democratic party, it's Nancy Pelosi. Born in Baltimore and representing a San Francisco district, she can sound uncannily like Bobby Kennedy in her inflections as well as her words. She's already gotten under the skin of Republican commentators, which is a very good sign. She was tagged as a "latte liberal," which consolidates insults to liberals, Californians and baby boomers, via the fashionable slander by the likes of David Brooks. Maybe it insults Italians as well.

Responding to her election, right-thinking columnist George Wills was aghast at the Democrats' stubbornly embracing their core values which, according to him, were repudiated at the polls by right-thinking Americans. Wills seems to feel that standing up for the non-super-rich,for social justice, against reactionary fundamentalist economics, and against indiscriminate killing of helpless people to enrich oil men and tighten their control of our erstwhile liberties, is all in rather bad taste.

Democrats have apparently chosen instead to see the lesson of the election as caused not by incomplete capitulation but by too much of nothing. They're probably correct--they lost a lot of close elections, and the war fever/patriotism p.r. campaign that substituted for a political campaign may have made the difference. In any case, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Be who you are.

The Democrats have to state clearly and eloquently what's wrong with the Bushie foreign policy and economic fundamentalism in terms of harm to the country as a whole, and to the majority of its citizens. They must state clearly and eloquently how their policies express their core values: the way things ought to be.

The Democrats must do all this while focusing on the future. Yes, the future looks about as grim as Theron indicated, even taking into account election night depression. But it's not set in stone. The other night on "Now"---after a discussion describing a present that sounded a lot like "the future" that our brother Morgan depicted in a novel he wrote in the early 1980s---Bill Moyers asked Harper's editor Lewis Lapham whether he was optimistic about the future. "Sure," Lapham said, "because you never know. You never know."

The future is that which has not happened yet, therefore it is the open sea of possibility. There are two principal attitudes it is possible to take about the future: fear or hope.

The Republican reactionary agenda is about the past. It is about fear. Fear is a great motivator, but it isn't very smart. Hope requires consciousness, if is anything more than denial masked in cheerfulness. Years ago Arthur Schlesinger called liberalism the politics of hope.

Yes, hope requires a vision, and hope for our future requires a new and complex vision. But hope is also political, and of the moment.

"People don't eat in the long term," said Harry Hopkins, FDR's most valuable aide. "They eat every day." Hope is first of all about the future as a succession of present moments. Without working towards decency in the present, hope had no meaning in the political world. And hope is all about meaning, or it doesn't exist, it doesn't motivate, it doesn't produce the pause to evaluate, to overcome fear.

A better today fosters a better tomorrow, although a better tomorrow requires more: it requires dreams and hard work, persistence and imagination. It requires dedication to a larger agenda, while respecting the needs of participants in the present.

Hope is directed to the future, but it animates the present. I don't call myself an optimist or a pessimist. The mind may see the enormity of our present self-destructiveness, and disengage. The heart might despair, or it might flutter anyway in the joy of living that is pretty stubborn as a survival tool. But pessimism of the mind and optimism of the heart meet in the soul. The soul is the essence of being human. The only human attitude to take to the future is hope. So I am hopeful.

Hope and fear mix in the soul, and we do the best we can. But hope is a low persistent flame that flares up now and then, like a mother's smile. Fear can too easily become a roaring fire that consumes everything. We must bring hope back into the public and the political worlds of discourse and decision, and fan those flames.

A society that thrives on fear forgets the future. Fear burns up the present. The Democrats must once again become the party of the future. "The New Frontier," JFK said in accepting the party nomination in the summer of 1960, " is not a set of promises. It is a set of challenges." It is that philosophy, not necessarily that program, that Democrats must revive.

The American Party System Made Easy: Theron's Election Night Report
by Theron Dash


The voters---all 30% or so of them---have spoken, and now we will get the gloating. Republicans are very good at it. Their money and their ideas---which amount to the same thing---have won the day, with considerable help from Democrats, the corporate media, and the people who will live to regret the consequences of this election, even if they never quite connect those dots. They voted patriotism but what they will very likely get is oppression, war and Depression. They are already getting arrogance.

The Republican party is the party of arrogance. It is the party of mean-spirited arrogance with a happy face. No Democrat can whine as loud or become vicious past the point of psychosis like Republicans, though by now apparently nobody remembers how these folks eventually scared them during the Clinton years. Just as they don't remember the results of Republican arrogance when in power, like all the scary craziness Reagan and Nixon instituted.

Now the Republicans have been given a huge shot of perceived power, so you can expect very scary things for the foreseeable future. Like war, body bags and dead babies, plus more tax cuts for the wealthy while the rest of the country goes under. There's nothing and nobody to stop them now. They've gotten away with the incredible arrogance of the corporate foreign policy establishment represented in this administration. There's nothing to hold them back now. But their arrogance won't stop with mere war. They will pursue a domestic agenda that will materially impoverish what remains of the middle class, and they will ignore environmental crises as long as the snow machines at Aspen are unaffected.

With this perceived power freshly minted, they are already reinforcing the expression of their arrogance as the only acceptable language of political discourse. We will hear nothing but the wonderful things tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization will bring, as if there had never been a federal budget deficit caused by these policies of Republican Reagan, and as if the economy weren't now crashing and consumer confidence with it. Hey, even Newt Gingrich was rehabilitated for TV in time for the late election night news.

We will hear how paying taxes is a horrible burden, but going broke paying for health care, retirement and all the formerly public utilities and services privatized by the likes of Enron, while people work harder for less or else can't find work at all-well, that's good, that's free enterprise. That's arrogance.

And in this election, by and large the Democratic party turns out to be the party of cowardice. Most of its Senate candidates backed the Bush war and the Bush tax giveaway to the arrogant wealthy. Some apparently did so because they thought they had to, in order to win. So instead of standing up for principle and risking the consequences, they were cowards and still lost. The American people were cheated out of the debate they deserved and very probably wanted.

The party of arrogance versus the party of cowardice is not much of a choice. The Green Party in America is the party of self-righteousness and denial, and is no choice either.

There are a dwindling number, but still some decent members of Congress and the Senate, and reasonably good governors, but no national leaders so far to counter Republican arrogance and Democratic cowardice. There are two possibilities---other than dumb luck or divine intervention---for the near future. The first is the beginning of renewal through political turmoil, outside the electoral system, putting pressure on the parties. That unfortunately is most likely to occur because of horrendous war or economic Depression, or both simultaneously (and thanks to technology, it is more than just possible to have both at the same time.)

The second is to continue present trends, which on an historical timeline will look like the fitful, slow decline of America. This was probably just as invisible to most people in other declining civilizations as it is to most people in ours.

American democracy, once the envy of the world, is failing. It's somewhere between a plutocracy and a kakistocracy. The big money, the low turnout, and now the outcome of this election. The policies of the Bush administration don't match up very well with the real world of the twenty-first century. American ingenuity and efficiency, once the envy of the world, is stuck in obsolete ideologies.

When Senator Paul Wellstone died, many media reports called him a "60's liberal." This is the extent of how successful Republican ideology has been in taking over the terms of the debate. Wellstone's critique was based on principles he derived in part from Robert Kennedy for instance (and those who called themselves liberals in the 60s didn't consider RFK to be one of them), but which was clearly responsive and relevant to contemporary contexts, especially in terms of corporate power. Wellstone was indeed one of the last officials in Washington who reinvigorated this tradition and was energized and guided by those principles and passions. But that he could be so easily stereotyped as quaintly out of step, when in truth it is the Republican ideology that is in a state of rigor mortis and bears no relation to reality, characterizes the current perversity of public discourse.


America is not only behind the times, it is behind most of Europe in dealing with civic, social and environmental realities. If America didn't have the world's largest nuclear arsenal and most advanced weaponry, other nations wouldn't be wasting so much time listening to what our leaders say.

Arrogance, cowardice, viciousness and oppression, the suppression of criticism and creativity through federal, corporate and self-censorship, and as a thoroughly predictable byproduct of greed, envy and lies. Did I mention arrogance and cowardice? That's what's we have, and much more is coming. As well as lots and lots of noise.

Remember these words. You might not see or hear them again.

Millennium II: The Rich and the Poor of It

(In the backward world of Blogs, Part I follows Part II)

by Theron Dash

Now here are some additional facts, courtesy of Kevin Phillips, author of "Democracy and Wealth": A periodic Business Week survey showed that the ten best paid executives in 1981 made an average of $3.4 million. In 1988, the top ten averaged $22 million. In 2000, they averaged $155 million.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the average after-tax, inflation-adjusted cash income for the top one percent of Americans in 1979 was $256,000. By 1997, it had more than doubled, to $644,000. But rising tides lift all boats, right? That big money trickles down. The middle one-fifth made an average of $31,700 in 1979. In 1997: $33,200. That's a big $1500 gain.

But they should count themselves fortunate. In 1979, the bottom fifth got an average of $9300. In 1997: $8700.

So it's little wonder that a new study of 13 industrial nations (I found this one myself, in Scientific American) shows that the best country for a rich child to grow up is the good old USA. For a poor child, the worst countries are the U.S. and the U.K.

Phillips writes and talks about the distortions of democracy caused by such immense disparity, and the behavior of the rich that goes along with it. But let's keep our eye on the money for a moment.

I personally am still mystified by what people who make hundreds of millions a year do with that money. But I am not confused about where that money comes from. It comes from everybody else.

You don't have to draw diagrams for people who have seen their retirement funds disappear because of recent corporate corruption and burst bubbles of one kind or another. They know their money ended up lining the golden pockets of executives.

Unionized industrial workers have known for more than a century where the riches come from: their blood, sweat and tears. Sure, there's technology, innovation, smart management, business acumen and all that—--but those are neither rocket science nor exhausting, life and health threatening labor. Nothing gets made and nothing runs without the contributions of skilled and unskilled labor.

But what about the rest of us? It's been fashionable for several decades now for TV stations and newspapers to run some regular feature exposing practices which waste government funds: taxpayers' money. Government mismanagement, waste and corruption. This has become so reflexive that I saw a series exposing Medicare and Medicaid fraud—the fraud was perpetrated by sleazy subcontractors and doctors—that is, people in the private sector—--but the blame was on government regulators (the few that were left) for not spotting the fraud sooner.

Anyway, the tag line for this kind of report is usually something like: It's Your Money. Well, guess what. That money that disappears because of corporate fraud is your money, too. And so is the money that these rich folks make by exploiting a system stacked in their favor. It's not just money you could have made. IT'S ALL YOUR MONEY.

Why is your health insurance bill so high? Why does your cable TV bill keep going up, despite the promises of de-regulation that it would go down? Ditto your electric bill?

Because costs are higher, they say. The cost of insuring the sick—all that expensive medical care, for example. Doesn't TV news say so?

Sure, medical care is expensive. Then again, if it's just the higher costs of care, how is it that health insurers are able to spend so much on political lobbying? How do they become such huge and powerful corporations? How is it that cable companies can buy up other companies—where does that money come from?

Guess.

Then there's advertising. You think you only pay for advertising when it pops up on top of the news on your computer so you can't read anything, or when up to a third of the time you're watching a TV show you're watching commercials. But you are paying for that advertising with more than frayed nerves. You pay for it all—not once, but twice, at the very least. And that's even before it does its job: getting you to buy something you don't need and didn't know you wanted.

You pay for advertising when you buy the product. Advertising costs are build into the purchase price. You pay for advertising again when the company gets a tax deduction for it, and your tax dollars must make up the difference.

And all that political lobbying and campaign money— that's part of the purchase price, too, and a lot of that is also deducted. So you are paying for all the laws that get written by businesses and passed by lawmakers beholden to corporate contributors and looking for perks and cushy jobs when they retire. A lot of those laws may not be what you favor at all. They may be against your interests, not to mention your principles. But you have no choice. If you want the product or service, you pay for a corporation's ability to manipulate the system for its benefit. Chances are, thanks to these laws you're paying for, you'll be paying more somewhere else down the line.

You paid for privatization and deregulation. So now you're probably paying more for both health insurance and out of pocket medical expenses; more for cable, more for electricity. You've paid to permit and encourage corporations to control access to more and more of the necessities of life, including water and seeds for growing food, so you'll be paying more and quite possibly getting less.

You're paying for television dramas that demonize the poor. You're paying for rich TV anchors and television news that is controlled by huge corporations, so you're unlikely to get any news or information that doesn't contribute to the riches of the rich, or any information that might threaten that power and those riches.

You may be paying for all this by working two or three jobs and never getting enough sleep, by worrying constantly about how to pay for a child's education or health care, or how to avoid being downsized into a cardboard box.

We live our lives as best we can. But let's be a little bit clear about the context. We pay for health insurance if the government does it, or if private companies do it--plus we pay their profit. We pay for political contributions even when they go to candidates and causes we don't favor. Campaign reform is a consumer issue. Corporate lobbying is a consumer issue. Paying to have our communications media controlled by private interests is a consumer issue. The current health care system is a tragedy, within the larger tragedy of what's happened to the political system and the social system, and we are the tragic saps for letting this happen. And we're paying for it. Again and again.

This is the Millennium that is

Here's how the new millennium began: In 2000, the average CEO was paid more for one day's work than the average wage earner got all year.

What about those above-average CEOs? Well, the CEOs of 23 of the larger companies the SEC and other government agencies are investigating for various skullduggeries were above average in pay by about 70%. Which is about the same percentage that their companies' market value dropped in the year and a half after January 2001. But so far they haven't had to give any of their money back. Which, by the way, added up to $1.4 billion between 1999 and 2001.

Thanks to these above-average CEOs, some 160,000 wage earners no longer earn any wages in these companies.

Those average CEOs saw their pay go up by 571% in the 1990s. So the average CEO made almost six times as much in 2000 as in 1990. Average workers' pay rose by about a third.

But fortunately, Americans are no longer dependent on mere wages—we have become a nation of capitalists, earning from investments in the stock market. Or so we're told. We heard a lot about how average Americans became stock market investors in this new millennium, proving how robust American capitalism is in spreading the wealth. Turns out that the bottom 80% of stock owners hold less than five percent of all stocks. The top one percent owns nearly half. That's consistent with the lopsided statistics on wealth in general.

So much for statistics. How about some damn lies? You've seen those lovely Wal-Mart commercials—the bouncy old folks, the smiling minorities talking about how great it is to work at Wal-Mart. After all, it's the biggest damn company on the planet! It employs more people than the U.S. military!

It's also a defendant in thirty states—that's 30 out of 50—because some of those happy employees say their managers force them to punch out after their 8 hour work day, but continue to work—not for overtime, not even for the same rate of pay (which itself would be illegal), but for NOTHING. Which is real illegal. Wage slaves? Nah. These are your old-fashioned kind. No-wage slaves.

Most of this information comes from a column by Arianna Huffington. She used to be the female Henry Kissinger—on every talk show with her relentlessly annoying yet hypnotic voice, talking the conservative line. She should have spelled her name Air-ianna. Her former husband, multimillionaire Michael H., ran for governor in California. He preferred to let his millions (and Arianna) speak for him, since it seemed he had nothing much to say. He lost, and Arianna promptly divorced him. In recent years she's become a persistent voice for that lower 80%. What happened to her? That could be quite a story.

Addendum to the 10/7 essay on stopping the war
by the Dash Brothers

Before the folks at Washington Week in Review turned to their real business of the evening---helping guest star Tom Friedman sell his new book---one of them mentioned that although the Democrats in Congress caved, every single Latino in Congress and most of the black members voted against the Bushwar. Think about it.

The one person who can stop the war

There's now just one person in the United States who can stop the invasion of Iraq. He's probably the only person in the entire world who can stop it. Saddam Hussein couldn't stop it, even if he gave UN inspectors the keys to Iraq on his way to retirement in Argentina--- unless maybe he does it after the November elections.

The only person who can stop this war cold, is Colin Powell.

Right now it doesn't look like he's inclined to stop it. On October 1, after Iraq and the UN inspectors agreed on a procedure and the American stock market shot up like a skyrocket, Secretary of State Colin Powell went out of his way to say that the old inspection process isn't good enough, and that the U.S. would push ahead with a UN resolution demanding full access, with the penalty spelled out.

But this may be a tactical move to outflank the war-fevered politicos in the White House. Powell also said that the UN resolution would naturally reflect the process of negotiation with other nations---that is, it might be a compromise. This puts him in the position of possibly getting some kind of resolution he can use within the administration as an argument against invasion. If Iraq hasn't done anything really egregious by then, this might work. Right now the Bushies are so self-inflamed and inflated that they won't take yes for an answer from Iraq or anybody else. Only Powell can slow them down.

Whether he will or not is an open question, but it seems unlikely that the Bushes can go ahead without him. Powell is the only person in the administration who is known and respected internationally. More to the point, he is the general who ran what was militarily an invasion of Iraq in the Gulf War. The Bushies need his support and participation desperately.

Even a glance at the current situation suggests why. There is little international support, and some important international opposition to this invasion. While the Bushies are using television pretty skillfully to create the drumbeat for war (not that this is too difficult), it's hard for anyone who's paying attention to avoid realizing that nobody has made a good case for why this "regime change" must occur right this very minute. There's been no clear and present danger demonstrated, and as the stock market reflects and many forecasters agree, a war is not likely to be good for a precarious economy. The only reason to be talking about this right now is to increase Republican chances in the congressional elections.

It's all part of a coordinated strategy. Republicans throughout the country are draping their TV ads in the red, white and blue, trumpeting their patriotism and calling into question the patriotism of Democrats. It wasn't a slip or a mere sentence, when President Bush castigated Democrats in Congress for concentrating on petty special interests ( you know-- like prescription drugs, the economy), and said they weren't concerned with national security. It is a political strategy.

Does everyone understand the political motive? That's also an open question. Democrats are scared to death of appearing to be political on a matter of war and peace, even though they all know that politics is what all the war noise is about. Congressional mail is running heavily against the war, and Democrats see it at 20 to one against or more, but those campaign ads scare them.

Of course, politics may not be the main reason. Politics might even be a smokescreen. It may also be that the representatives of Big Oil in the White House (which includes nearly everybody of any importance) are using the political argument to advance their own interests with a takeover of Iraq and possibly other areas of the Gulf.

I'm still waiting for someone to tell me why this isn't delusional. The idea that the U.S. can run the Gulf region like an oil corporation is insane. They can't even run Afghanistan. An invasion of Iraq is at least equivalent to Vietnam in quagmire potential, but then this war isn't being led by the best and the brightest. They're looking more like the worst and the dumbest.

But it's the insanity of the situation that may offer the greatest hope, because Colin Powell, even though a Republican, does not appear to be crazy. He is going to look at what it takes in personnel and technology, in logistics and costs, to first of all successfully invade Iraq and take down Saddam. That might be relatively easy, but costly (not that we'll know the cost for years to come), or it may take a long time and be very obviously costly in every possible way.

But then he's going to look at what comes next. "Regime change" sounds so simple. But the last time America with a huge coalition behind it invaded Iraq---led by Colin Powell--- the march to Baghdad was stopped short. Why? Could it be that Powell knew that the cost of regime change was beyond what the coalition would commit to doing, in resources, attention and time?

This time is different. It's worse. There isn't even a coalition. Last time in the Gulf the American military did most of the warfare, and the coalition mostly paid for it. Guess who pays for the whole thing this time? Odd how the tax cuts for the wealthy will be kicking in right about then.

But if Powell and others manage to string out the preparations past the November elections (and maybe that's the plan anyway), a short hangover may be followed by more sober assessments. Still, there may come a time when Powell has to step up, lay out the facts, and even lay down the law.

If Powell is ultimately against an invasion, how could it possibly happen? The Cheney wing would probably like to see him resign, but not on the eve of the largest military operation of the twenty-first century so far. Not when he is the most prominent African American in a government leadership role, and a lot of the men and women who will actually have to do the fighting, killing and dying are African Americans. They have little in common with the rest of the Bushies, for their veins do not run with oil, and their parachutes are not made of gold.

If it comes to a war he believes is a mistake, will Powell go along with his Commander in Chief, or will Bush blink first? It's possible Powell would publicly support an invasion he privately opposes, just because it's patriotic. But somehow I doubt it. He's the best known American military figure, and he won't be able to hide from the media or international leaders. He has his own credibility and his effectiveness as a leader to worry about, if he's trying to defend what he doesn't believe in. That might work if he was more of a politician or less prominent. His choice would be between waffling and hiding, and either choice would tend to undermine the administration.

He could also focus all his power on providing American troops with what they need for an overwhelming military victory, discharging his duty to them. But can he then turn his back on the chaos that would ensue in the region, or the fate of the occupying force over time, when the slow accumulation of death is no longer fodder for the 24/7 media frenzy of the month? If asked about any other Bushie, the question would be rhetorical. But Powell might be able to translate his sense of duty from just the military he once commanded to the country he now serves.

America suffered a great trauma last September 11. Only a sober assessment of both threats and actions to neutralize the threats will make anyone safer from terrorism. The most terrifying aspect of the current leadership is its appearance of being both cynically manipulative and seriously out of control. For more than a year now, Osama bin Laden has been the devil incarnate, but he never gave the Bushies the satisfaction of becoming a visible bloody body. So they have to go after the ever reliable Saddam. At least they know where he lives.

America needs somebody to bring some sobriety to this White House. Maybe time will do the job, and the tide of opinion and protest. But just because this invasion is crazy in so many ways doesn't mean it won't happen. World War I was insane, and lots of people at the time knew it. This is how some wars start. So I expect that Colin Powell is going to be at the center of one of the more fateful backstage dramas of the next few months in Washington, DC.

Iraq and Roll

So far no one is saying it out loud, in the newspapers I read or the TV I've seen. But I imagine it's on the minds of many people, especially Americans, in this suspended moment before the war promoted by the President of the United States takes center stage: namely, we didn't really elect this guy.

Especially after the immense media concentration on the September 11 anniversary-much of it sincere, some clearly exploitive, but also some which seemed to be forced-we seem to have forgotten this other event that now looms so large in what is to come: the election of 2000.

We are being led, forced, on a course that defies historical standards and national ethics in modern times-- essentially a very radical course-by an administration that took power after losing the popular vote across the nation, and assumed office only by virtue of an extraordinary intervention by the Supreme Court, in a decision tainted by the evident conflict of interests of several Justices.

Its claim on being a democratically elected government is fragile at best. Yet this government is behaving with an arrogance that seems to lend credence to the proposition that it has contempt not only for the rest of the world but for the will of the American people. At the very least one would expect a certain political modesty from a government that came into power not quite by election, and not quite by a coup. (Though their arrogance tells me that in their minds, it was a coup.) But perhaps September 11 changed the equation of power-or perhaps it's just that they can count on the peculiar instant amnesia of this age.

Though no one now is connecting those dots, I'm sure future historians (if any) will do so in a matter of a few paragraphs. The first paragraph on George W. Bush will refer to his dubious claim to the presidency---that it came down to how to count or not count votes in a single state, where as result of error and designed suppression of votes, he carried the state and hence the election by a handful of actual votes---but only as validated by a split Supreme Court decision, defying both logic and law.

The second paragraph of this history will note that the G.W. Bush administration was dominated by the political cronies of the president's father, who spent their time out of government using their contacts to enrich themselves and large corporations, and blatantly represented those same interests when in government. It will note that the Bush administration was floundering until terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Then Bush made an off-the-cuff remark while standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center and saw immediately the makings of a political identity in the cheers of rescue workers that obviously surprised him. He could be the symbol of fighting back, even though he wasn't going to be doing any of the fighting, just as he could cry "Let's roll!" into Iraq, and then go take a nap. He could parlay that figurehead/talking head leadership into time-tested political manipulation based on patriotism and the fear of seeming not patriotic.

The third paragraph, I imagine, will be about the invasion of Iraq, and its tragic consequences. This history will perhaps note the puzzling lack of emotion and debate opposing this war until it was too late to stop it. It will note however that most of what then happened was foreseen at least in outline (columnists like Molly Ivins, Robert Scheer, and locally in San Francisco, Jon Carroll and Rob Morse, have been remarkably clear.)

These historians will fill in the details of the ensuing chaos and violent death in the Gulf region and the Middle East, the chaos and strife spreading to various political and economic alliances. This history will note the damage to the world economy, weakening it at a time when it needed to be strong to cope with the changes slowly but surely taking hold as consequences of the climate crisis. It will note the costs on life in the United States of more economic hardship and a greater siege mentality against real and imagined threats-with one of the real threats being an increasingly intrusive, powerful and arrogant police state government.

We owe all of this partly to the blindness of Americans who fell for the simplistic idea that it did not matter if Bush or Gore won the 2000 election. That Bush and Gore are part of the same corrupt political system is true, and has consequences. But that doesn't deny their differences, and one or the other was going to be president.

We reap the whirlwind of this failure to understand the differences between these two men, and the people they bring into power. Millions of Americans voted on small differences. If you can believe the media conventional wisdom, many voted for Bush because he seemed like a nice guy, not as stiff as Gore. This extraordinarily stupid test for presidential fitness was granted legitimacy by media's failure to even question it-but then how could many TV "news" personalities challenge the wisdom of judging on nice guy appearances when they owe their jobs to the same standards.

The Bush presidency is leading America and the world to a disastrous twenty-first century in three interlocking ways: internationally, by arrogance and war; domestically, by bankrupting the federal government on tax breaks for the wealthy; and globally, by ignoring global heating and other environmental threats.

The agenda behind all of this is pretty clear: favor entrenched corporate interests, keep the oppressed people of the world in control through force, and keep the American people scared: scared for their safety and their country, so they will support Bush and the Republican establishment from now until doomsday, and scared for their own livelihoods so they won't rock the boat, so they will keep fighting each other for crumbs, with their nose to the grindstone and nothing in their heads but dreams of sudden wealth and celebrity.

We can see the consequences of those apparently small differences between Bush and Gore and between these two parties pretty clearly now. Though most Democrats are too scared of appearing unpatriotic to do more than stutter, at least Al Gore has spoken forthrightly about the folly and arrogance of the Bush administration's march towards war, and its foreign policy pretensions that would make the Roman Empire jealous, especially as it was falling.

We can hear echoes of Gore's campaign call to fight for middle class Americans who are being lacerated now, and who will have their futures mortgaged by Bush war and tax policies. That call was ridiculed by the wealthy and wannabe-wealthy minions of the media, and disbelieved by the Naderites. It's not hard to justify the Naderite skepticism or even cynicism, but it's also not hard to see where the important lines of difference are. Some are large, like the tax cut that Gore never would have proposed or allowed to become law.

Other differences may seem smaller, but loom as large. Clearly, Gore would talk differently on global heating and other environmental matters, though even if he had become president, environmentalists would have had to keep the pressure on to get real change. But at least they wouldn't have to spend such an immense amount and proportion of energy and resources to even get the climate crisis on the table.

And here's an apparently small but very real difference. It isn't just that Gore is a lot smarter than Bush (though incredibly this was held against him much of the time) but that he respects the process and conclusion of science and thought. Intellectual integrity is something Gore actually understands. So we would not be seeing the folly now being perpetrated in Washington of replacing scientists with political and corporate hacks at EPA and on the federal scientific advisory boards to the CDC, the FDA and other agencies charged with health and safety. It's a virtual certainty that at some point people will get sick and die because of these decisions. With the challenges inevitably ahead-the health impact of global heating alone is going to be monstrous---this small act may turn out to be among the most consequential, just as important as that handful of votes in Florida.

At this moment it may seem pointless to revisit the 2000 election, but even beyond the need to understand history or be condemned to idiotically repeat it, there is in this moment, at least for me, the feeling that something truly terrible was set in motion, not just in September 2001 but in November 2000.

The fall of western civilization, the beginning of the end of humanity's hegemony on the planet---if you've been paying attention for the past few years, these things are not only being discussed as real possibilities, in some quarters they are virtual clichés. That western civilization is about to collapse is something like an assumption. The premise that humanity and perhaps all life on earth is in real peril in this century is also a kind of starting point for discussions among respectable scientists and knowledgeable observers.

A feature of collapse in its early stages, and perhaps even when it is well underway, is likely to be that not many people notice. They continue to judge problems in the same narrow frameworks; they fail to "connect the dots" in today's favorite cliché.

There was an article in The New Yorker a few years back that caught my eye, called "The Tipping Point." The author expanded it into a book I found disappointing, because I believe he missed the obvious ramifications of the theory on important issues. The Tipping Point theory sounds like systems theory I heard discussed some years ago. It says that there is a particular point in change-the tipping point-when the change can no longer be reversed until it plays itself out. The behavior of epidemics is an example.

The tipping point of the twenty-first century may very well turn out to be the moment American forces invade Iraq. If so, and it tips over this extraordinarily complex and fragile house of cards until it all falls down, there may not be future historians to record any of this. But if there are, my guess is that of all the dates they rank in significance from the first years of this century, September 11---for all its horror and importance--will turn out to be no greater than a close third.

On the Bookshelf: Self Beyond Help

by Theron Dash

1. Chicken Shit For the Soul
A compendium of real easy and very minor changes in attitude and behavior-or maybe just in home decoration-that won't cause you any pain or effort, or actually change much. You'll feel better, but not for long. Then you'll need to buy another one of these books, such as...

2. Simplistic Abundance
Color-coordinated volumes of homilies. Collect them all! (Note: if you can find that rare Vol. 12 in fuscia, it's worth clobbering somebody at the yard sale to get it!)

3. I'm OK, You're Poor by Jack Welsh.
The ex-CEO of GE explains why people who don't have golden parachutes as big as the Ritz and acronyms associated with their names are pathetic losers.

4. Winning Through Interrogation
Report on the Bush administration approach to intelligence gathering, which is to save needless effort and cut costs by relying on putting people in prison and getting them fired so the FBI and CIA can spend time questioning people instead of wasting their time gathering and evaluating data, which they've shown they are not too good at anyway. Why go out looking for information when you can force the information to come to you? Includes evaluation of torture services offered by third party countries.

5. Be Here Whenever
The Whatever Generation's guide to enlightenment, or not.

6. Get With the Pogrom
An unbiased guide to persecuting your favorite designated enemy group, foreign or domestic. Includes the latest Internet techniques, though the revival of old-fashioned war on the Devil is given its due, too.

Today's dialogue comes to you live from The Drink & Think, the frequent home of American Samizat and meetingplace of the Dash brothers. Located in the Rue Morgue Mall.

PHINEAS DASH: So, what's it all about, 9/11? What is there to say about it a year later?

CHRISTOPHER DASH: Last time I flew I had to remove my belt, jacket and shoes, and stand on a piece of carpet that had two footprints burned into it. I had to open my sealed bottle of water and take a sip in front of the security guard. Later, when I was entering a public building in Washington, D.C., an art museum in the Smithsonian, I was opening my backpack for the security guard to inspect. I took out my bottle of water and was about to take a sip---it was hot outside and I was thirsty---when the security guard told me I wasn't allowed to drink from a bottle inside the building.

THERON DASH: Exactly. Power plus fear plus bureaucracy equals intense absurdity. Of which this is a small example. Nothing like, say, attacking Iraq. But indicative.

CHRISTOPHER: Yes, but for the largest number of people this has been the biggest effect of 9/11 so far. It has made air travel, which was already deteriorating, an experience in madness.

PHINEAS: Air travel is on the brink of collapse. Think of what happens to the economy then.

CHRISTOPHER: I can remember when flying was pleasant. Or even when it was fun to go no-frills. People's Express. They had style when they started out. I was on a flight once, packed to the gills with people giddy over saving so much money, when the announcement came over the p.a. "Passengers on the right side of the aircraft can look to the left and see the passengers on the left side of the aircraft." Later when it got really big it wasn't so much fun. But they were always overbooked and I got so many free tickets by volunteering to be bumped on flights coming home that I saw half the continent for free. But for efficient and very comfortable flights, nothing beat Air Canada.

PHINEAS: Even Air Canada isn't so great now, but it suggests what really needs to be done. Air travel is so essential that the government is going to wind up bailing out some of these airlines, but that money isn't going to improve them, just keep them going. What we really need is a government funded airline.

THERON: Air America? Run by the CIA?

PHINEAS: No, run by TWA, the old TWA. Run by airline professionals, but run as a public utility. Government built the interstate highways, it subsidies rail travel, so supporting air travel is justifiable. And if the federal government paid for an airline with quality service and reasonable fares, maybe private airlines would find ways to improve their service and fares. A single national airline run like Air Canada used to be can coexist with private airlines just like Air Canada and other state-run airlines coexisted with commercial airlines. Plus a certain minimum amount of available air travel would be guaranteed. Somebody has to do something about the current chaos.

THERON: As much as I thrive on chaos, I'm inclined to agree. Did you read about that woman, the environmental activist, who was banned from flying because somebody didn't like her politics? And how she was abused with impunity by a single soldier, maybe not even regular army, but with more authority than anyone else at the airport? All the really loose accusations that carried really heavy penalties? That's chaos plus fear plus power, minus rights.

PHINEAS: We all realize what a serious trauma 9-11 was. But there hasn't been another airliner problem since then, and I'll go out on limb to say it's real unlikely there will be.

CHRISTOPHER: You went out on that limb on 9-12, as I recall. And of course it makes sense that they wouldn't expect to get away with using airliners again. Surprise was the essence of it.

PHINEAS: Heightened security is sensible. But it's gotten out of hand. Along with the rest of the Bushfellows agenda.

THERON: It's also taken a year to get federally employed security people as inspectors at airports. Yet some of them are saying that their training consisted of maybe fifteen minutes. That doesn't bode well for your national airline, Phin. Maybe we should just give the franchise to Air Canada.