Post-Modern Savagery

...or this?

The latest images documenting the death of the latest tyrant to fall, in this case Libya’s Oadaffi, provide the most recent reminder of the savagery that has begun to dominate a process that has been touted as the path to democracy. In recent times, we have been treated to the public hanging of Sadaam Hussein, a Navy Seal ninja death squad assassinating Osama Bin Laden, and prior to the brutal killing of Muammar Qadaffi, the high-tech liquidation via a drone attack of an American citizen who had thrown in his lot with Al Qaeda, Anwar Al-Awlaki. The growing acceptance of the use of death squads can only be written down as a descent into an acceptance of vigilantism and state terror.

Extra-legal or quasi-legal assassination of political figures is, of course, far from a new phenomenon. The pages of history—both modern and ancient—are drenched with the blood of men, women and children killed for political motives. Yet, the recent spate of killings seems ominous. In the past, whether we consider and reflect upon the deaths in the 1960s of the two Kennedy brothers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, etc., it seems that we were at least invited to look upon their murders as the work of dark forces, working outside of the realm of law and of due process. In the aftermath of World War II, the worst bloodbath in human history, with upwards of 70 million dying as combatants, innocent civilians or concentration camp victims, humanity seemed to reel back in horror and attempted to put in effect rules governing the punishment of those labeled as war criminals. (It is obviously the winners of a war who determine who will get tagged with that label. As James Bradley notes in his book, Flyboys, one U.S. general wrote, “We used to say in Tokyo that the U.S. had better not lose the next war, or our generals and admirals would all be shot at sunrise without a hearing of any sort.”) Since the “War on Terror” was initiated by the U.S. (after suffering its first attack by a foreign power since our cousins invaded in 1812, and after having had the luxury of participating in the second world war without a single American city being bombed), our nation has revealed a heretofore uncharacteristic (or, worse, dare we say) unacknowledged bloodthirstiness. There seem to be no rules to assure the humane treatment of our present enemy combatants, and, when they meet their grisly demise, we are all invited to celebrate the bloodbath. This is different. This is something new in our public behavior. And it is an ominous sign. Is this who we have become as a people? Let us hope that this behavior does not speak for all but a small percentage of the American people, and that the rule of law can be restored.

OWS, The New York Times, CNN, HULU and RT

The map on the left was published on a business web site to indicate locations around the globe that were planning to participate in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement on Saturday, October 15th. (Here the color red, currently being borrowed by the Orwellian sages in the Republican Party and an obedient mainstream media to indicate the party's areas of domination and influence, seems to revert to its more traditional symbolism of standing for the dread forces of rebellion and revolution...reminiscent of the Brezhnev years when American journals like Time, Newsweek and News and World Report would show the threat of communism engulfing the entire globe in large pools of red, no?) A form of globalization that I can live with seems to be taking place right now, one that the IMF, the World Bank, the ITO and Tom Friedman may not find so appealing. Will something substantial come of this? Much is made by the usual talking heads in the media of the OWS folks not having a list of demands. I found --in a stunning epiphany that might have come from the mind of Marshal McLuhan--that the mere act of trying to follow what is going on with the movement and the protests taking place is itself enough to reveal, for me, at least, what makes me angry enough to take to the streets and join in the protests.

Let me walk you through my experience. I relied, as many now do, on the internet to obtain information, and since I am still mainstream enough to continue to accept the New York Times as the "newspaper of record," I first went to its web page. But, oh, that would not work. I had forgotten that the Times no longer gives me access to its news stories at the moment since I have "used up" the limit of 20 articles for the month it imposes on all who do not pay for its services. The electronic version of the paper had already been drowning in advertising. On a given day, the site may open with a full page ad as a preface to actual news. On each and every day, there is a large, often animated, ad just beneath the paper's banner. Though sorely tested by the paper's new policy, I have so far held out. I will not subscribe--even if it means giving up the secret, nasty pleasure I have taken in posting my responses to such as Paul Krugman and David Brooks and counting the "recs" my efforts had elicited. (Range: zero to over 600.)

I then went to CNN.com where once again, each sound bite was prefaced by what seemed an interminable commercial. It was the last straw. "Doesn't take much," you may say, "to set you off, does it?" You see, something had happened earlier in the evening that served to really take me to the edge. Prior to resorting to the internet, I had turned to Channel 75 on my shiny new HD television set so that I could watch Amy Goodman's Democracy Now, only to find I could no longer get Channel 75. What came on the screen was a scrambled picture accompanied by garbled sound. Must be a coincidence. Certainly, the cable provider wouldn't censor Amy.

Then, in a lapse of dedication to my task, I decided to console myself by catching up on an episode of my favorite BBC series, Doc Martin. I recalled a friend telling me that there was a site called "Hulu" that allows one to watch television shows on line. Of course, it was annoying to find that I had to "register" with Hulu before they would give me access, but I am getting used to jumping through this particular hurdle on the net. And, lo and behold, as they say, after entering Doc Martin in the seach box, a screen appeared that promised to make available to me all those episodes I had missed. Imagine my excitement. When I made my choice and double-clicked on a still from the show, it appeared to be loading rather quickly, and, although my pleasure sagged a bit after seeing a notice to the effect that there would be something like "light commercial interruption," my spirit rebounded at the strains of the show's theme music. Within moments, however, a commercial interrupted the program. Actually two commercials. I stuck with it, but my perserverance was rewarded with about eighteen commercials over the course of the program. Adding insult to this injury was a little message at the top of my screen that appeared with each commercial asking me, "Does this commercial interest you? Yes? No?" I, of course said no, and was assured that adjustments would be made. Within two or three minutes the very same commercials appeared on my screen. I made a note to myself to unsubscribe to Hulu as soon as I could stomach the process of doing so.

I then recalled that a friend had recommended RT as a news source, a media outlet that originates in Russia. There I found that--without any commercial interruption--no pop-up ads or similar distasteful phenomena, I could navigate through a number of news reports on what was happening right here in New York's Times Square as well as in several major cities around the world. RT had its version of the map that begins this piece, a clearer map showing that literally hundreds of cities were allying themselves with the stalwarts in Zucotti Park, even, it appears protesting under the umbrella label of Occupy Wall Street. How interesting, I thought, that after almost a century of communist rule, journalism coming out of Russia seemed so superior to anything our beloved homeland was turning out.

If there is any one aspect of life under latter-day capitalism that would send me out into the streets raising my voice in protest, it is the feeling that we are drowning, suffocating in advertising. And the more desperate the crisis in the capitalist realm, the more advertising is directed at us. Phrases from the past come in rushes--"the business of America is business," "what's good for General Motors is good for the country," an old boss who once told me, "If I wrapped a pile of manure attractively enough and put it in my store window, someone would buy it."

What is it the protesters want? Well, I can't speak for all of them, but I know what I want. I want to be free of advertising. I cannot recall a single television commercial I have ever seen, (and I must have seen about ten million since as a child I was entranced by such as Kukla, Fran and Ollie and the Ernie Kovack's morning show to become addicted to televison), that ever prompted me to buy anything. Not a single bar of soap. The endless stream of ads has only become more profuse since the Reagan era and the end of regulation. It has slowly creeped into what we still call public television. It takes up ever more space and pages in most printed matter, crowding out content, even merging with content to the point where one often finds it difficult to distinguish ads from content. It even tells us what drugs to urge on our physicians while pretending a kind of wholesome transparency by admitting of such side effects as sexual stimulation that may require emergency room care, blindness or death.

With what triumphant airs did we sing the praises of all those Coke and Marlboro and Benetton and McDonald's ads as they came to light up the Moscow streets. No longer would the soviet masses be condemned to their grey lives. Give them more plastic, more neon, more color. They're eating it up.

As for me, I'll take grey.

The Wall Street Occupation

Among the many signs in evidence in Zucotti Park, currently occupied by a group of protesters, was one that announced, "Class War Ahead." Of late, that phrase has emanated from the mouths of far more Republicans than from any group on the left. How is it, some ask, that the right has the nerve, given its own actions, of suggesting that class warfare is the unique tactic of the left? What, if not class warfare, could better describe right wing behavior over the last thirty years and more?

Beyond merely flying in the face of reality, the co-opting of the left's rhetoric and even some of its imagery has, by now, become a tired tactic in the right wing's "play book." Examples of the Orwellian use of twisted logic, inversions, euphemism and emotionally charged neologisms is too long to catalog here since the attempt to "own the language" became particularly frenzied back in the Reagan era when so-called neo-liberals (mostly ex-anti-Stalinist leftists) joined forces with the older brand of Republicans and bestowed upon them their full talent at double-speak. The phenomenon was propelled, too, by virtue of the fact that the long term alliance between the Jewish and Black advocacy communities had broken down, and, following the Yom Kippur War in Israel, a newly energized Zionism found an ally in the right wing evangelical Christian community. In the good old days, the only right wing "intellectual" on the radar was William F. Buckley, a man who, by current standards, was a straight shooter. The old Trotskyites who had begun to crowd into the Republican Party, however, soon taught the right how to "mess with their minds" with all the aplomb of Ivy Leaguers writing for their campus satire journals. To cite some obvious examples, we now live in a "homeland" (a neologism with echoes of the German heimat), where "red" states (formerly the iconic color of the left) are Republican states, where civilian casualties of war are "collateral damage" (euphemism), where communists in the old USSR and elsewhere are "right wingers" (twisted logic). The right wing cabal at the University Chicago even claimed a unique concern for spreading democracy even if--as, outstandingly in Iraq--it had to be imposed by way of U.S. blockbuster bombs. What all of this amounts to is a well-organized and truly relentless disinformation (read old days propaganda) campaign by the right.

Thus, after over thirty years of unceasing attacks on unions, on the working and middle classes that have resulted in a stagnant or lower standard of living for most Americans, and given us, we have lately been told, 46 million Americans living below the poverty line, the most regressive tax structure in our history, the greatest maldistribution of wealth (with one percent living in heretofore unheard of wealth with everyone else sharing the crumbs), with the de-industrialization of the nation and gravely ailing social institutions, with an ever more vulgar and degraded public culture for the vast majority, the right, confronted with any signs of resistance to these trends, cries out, Class Warfare!

When, with the greed of the upper classes having turned into a feeding frenzy invited by the deregulation of financial markets and finally, as was inevitable, it collapsed in on itself, the propaganda mills began to work overtime. Only the hopelessly naive, it soon became clear, should have expected them to show any signs of guilt or remorse. Rather than confess to the dangers to the common man and woman that their unchecked risk-taking posed, rather than admit that their brand of capitalism had failed and brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy, the right found an explanation for the collapse that took many Americans by surprise. The villains in the collapse were not the reckless, greedy and criminal elements within the world of finance. No, it was poor Black Americans who bought homes they could not afford! Soon added to this list of villains were the nation's school teachers, who had the nerve to belong to unions and still have defined benefit pensions!

Black Americans on the verge of foreclosure and school teachers struggling to maintain their family budgets must have been amazed to find that they had had the power to destroy the most powerful economy on the planet. What is truly alarming is that the right's strategy worked. Enough Americans were convinced that, in the by-election year of 2010, the Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives. Whatever gains had been made by the Democrats during the first two years of the Obama administration came under a fanatical and ceaseless attack. The president's health bill is still being challenged in the courts, Dodd-Frank, a bill designed to restore some regulatory sanity to Wall Street and the Banks and the Consumer Protection Bill shepherded by consumer advocate Elizabeth Warren both face strenuous opposition.

List of Demands

Since the observation is being made by the mainstream media that the protesters have not made a list of demands, I offer the following draft document:

1. National Health Insurance.


2. Guaranteed employment for all Americans.


3. Increase in the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour.


4. Initiation of talks leading to the universal illegalization of all nuclear weapons.


5. Withdrawal of all U.S. forces from: Iraq, Afghanistan, Okinawa, Korea, Germany, Kosovo, and others of the nearly 1,000 U.S. military bases all over the globe.


6. A cut of at least 50% in the overall military budget.


7. Reinstitution of the draft during constitutionally approved wars and a prohibition on the hiring of private military personnel.


8. Cessation of all foreign aid that does not take the form of medical supplies, food, construction materials or personnel assistance.


9. Signing of the Geneva Accords prohibiting attacks on civilian populations.


10. Signing of the Kyoto Accords.


11. Full and adequate funding for the EPA, the FDA, FCC, FAA, OSHA, the SEC and other watchdog and consumer protection agencies.


12. An absolute prohibition of torture.


13. Reaffirmation of habeus corpus and other safeguards in our constitution.


14. Trials or release for all those held at Guantanamo.


15. Institution of a war crimes tribunal for all those responsible for the illegal war in Iraq as well as for all government officials who allowed or encouraged the use of torture.


16. Faithful adherence to the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of warfare.


17. A jobs program growing out of investment in:




1. mass transit


2. railroads, light rail, trolleys and jitneys


3. public housing


4. school construction


5. repair of infrastructure to include a Make America Beautiful component


18. A progressive tax system that ranges from 0% to 95%.


19. Elimination of all off-shore tax shelters.


20. Removal of all taxes on household items and clothing.


21. A 100% tax on all luxury goods and a 75% inheritance tax.


22. A minimum of 50 miles to the gallon for all passenger cars.


23. Elimination of the SUV loophole with regard to mileage requirements.


24. A tax on gasoline adequate to fund work on mass transit and railroads.


25. Federal financing of the public schools.


26. Free college tuition and free vocational training for all qualified students.


27. A reparations program for the descendants of slaves in the form of free tuition at colleges and universities, free job training, guaranteed employment, housing subsidies, investment in demographically Black communities in the form of housing, schools, libraries and enhanced social services.


28. Honoring of all treaties made with American Indians.


29. Limit on television advertising to a maximum of five minutes per hour. Elimination of all advertising on public television. Abolition of all drug advertising in all media except medical journals.


30. Decriminalization of all drug use.


31. Registration of all firearms. Prohibition of sale of all automatic weapons.


32. Labels on all products sold indicating all of their chemical contents as well as their possible hazards to health and the environment.


33. Institution of protections for children from all media and other products containing the exploitation of violence and pornography.


34. Institution and strict enforcement of protections for the humane treatment of all animals raised for human consumption or for use in scientific experimentation.


35. Tax-free status for all newspapers as well as other subsidies designed to promote print media.


36. Feel free to add to this list:

Tick, tick, tick...

The United States and its spiritual antecedent in the old empire are forever bound it seems in the noble endeavor of keeping the world safe for their various aristocratic and pretend aristocratic masters of the universe. Whether it is Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher working in tandem to rid their nations of allegedly feather-bedding unions in the 1980s or now, some thirty years after their victorious crusade, when one's nose gets tickled the other one sneezes. Yet, once again, the clock is ticking.


While, at the moment, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron seems not to have a direct counterpart in Democratic President Barack Obama, he might as well have. The young man who was elected to give us redemption from the excesses and crimes of the previous administration and even what some saw as reparation (albeit on the cheap) for the crimes of slavery, has ineffectually presided over a nation held hostage by the forces of the right on every significant matter of governance.


Now, as the world watches Great Britain's cities in flames, other images rush in: of Marx in the British Library believing he was writing the script for the demise of the nineteenth century's version of the evil empire, or, in our own century, of Naomi Klein drafting her warning call in The Shock Doctrine, or of disenfranchised Black Americans burning down their own cities, or even of Reichstag fires and a cataclysmic war that followed. Many commentators have seen in the right's recipe to save capitalism as we have known it a return to the nineteenth century, a century of laissez-faire capitalism and the absence of social welfare programs. If this is true, and the economic masters have not learned the lessons of history, we are in for a very tough time indeed.


For, in fact, the prosperity that the advanced industrial nations enjoyed for a brief period after World War II was paid for with tens of millions of lost lives. Capitalism is like the mythic phoenix that goes down in flames and is then reborn out of its own ashes. The communist revolutions in Russia and China that laid claim to breaking the cycle proved incapable of doing so. What their brief tenure did accomplish, however, was to provide an excuse for the capitalist world to divert the largest single portion of its wealth to financing gargantuan war machines. It was neither the reformist regimen of Franklin Roosevelt nor the revolutions in Russia and China that proved capable of--even temporarily--meeting the needs of modern humanity. Instead, it was an insane dance of destruction and rebuilding on the graves of millions of men, women and children.




We now seem dangerously close to repeating the tragic errors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As austerity programs are put in place in the aftermath of the Financial Panic of 2008 concurrent with the greatest gap between rich and poor the world has ever seen, the inevitable has occurred. Cet animal est très méchant: quand on l'attaque il se défend. "This animal is vicious: when attacked, it defends itself." goes the old saying. Whether in London or Athens or Cairo or Madison, Wisconsin, the aggrieved have begun to take to the streets. Take away workers' voices by destroying their unions, take away their pensions, their health benefits, their access to decent schools and libraries, their very access to a means to put bread on the table for their families, and--eventually--they will react.

War is such a simple, elegant solution. So many surplus laborers are just killed off. So many jobs are created to build and replenish the weapons of their own destruction. And, of course, the masters have once again saved their hoarded wealth from the attacking mob. Tick...tick...tick...

World War III

Many Americans are dismayed by the prospect of their country, still the most powerful and affluent in the world, coming to resemble some second-tier nation like Greece as it appears to tempt disaster by going into default and essentially declaring bankruptcy. In the recent past, “austerity budgets” were complacently viewed as measures imposed on fiscally irresponsible nations by the International Monetary Fund. Now, just as in the 1980s, when President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were forced by stagnating economic conditions to rewrite the social contract that had been created out of the class struggles of the 1930s, both Europe and the United States are compelled by an even graver economic crisis to further roll back the advances that had come out of those struggles. Until recently, liberal Americans desirous of enhancing our own version of the welfare state, (recently renamed, with the usual respect for language demonstrated by the right, the “entitlement” state), could point to European models. Now, however, with the onset of a globalized economy largely spearheaded and modeled by the U.S., and austerity measures being imposed not just in London, but in every European capital from Paris to Athens, we are witnessing a trans-Atlantic strategic alliance the likes of which has not been seen since World War II.

In the good old days, Ike and Monty could pore over their maps and plan their battle against a common, external foe. Conquer Germany and Japan, and all would once again be right with the world. That conflict resulted in an estimated 70 million human casualties, many dying on the same ground that just twenty-five years earlier had cost nearly 40 million lives. The root cause of those cataclysmic wars was an underlying economic crisis which all sides shared in common but then had the “luxury” of externalizing in some demonic foe. The fall of the Soviet Union, the erstwhile candidate as a force for evil, (Reagan’s Evil Empire), left the modern industrial nation states of the world faced with a novel situation in world history—when the next crisis occurred, they would have to conclude, with Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, that “the fault was not in our stars, But in ourselves.” We are thus faced with all the preconditions for grand alliances being formed against a common enemy with none available. Moscow and China, though not exactly best friends of the West and armed to the teeth, seem thoroughly reconciled to their respective fates of building casinos and speed trains. Feeling cornered, and badly needing an excuse to go to war, it is possible that the twenty-first century will revert to the fourteenth in yet another respect and resort to a religious crusade, raining havoc on Tehran—unless, of course, the other axes of evil in Havana or Pyongyang attack us. Attacking Tehran would seem to ill-advised, since, at the inevitable cost of countless lives, the global economic and political reshuffling that the two world wars accomplished would be far out of reach. (Although we probably should not rule out absolute madness.) Nevertheless—even if we are not quite ready to acknowledge the fact— we already in the midst of World War III, only this time the masters of the trans-Atlantic alliance, seated worriedly at their conference tables, can come up with no better plan than to tear up contracts with their own people that, in some cases, took centuries to ratify. They have thereby found their enemy in such as unionized workers, school teachers, the aged, the poor, the uneducated and, to put a fine point on it, potentially just about everyone beyond the moat.
Former President Bush, to cite just one example, showed no reluctance to tear up one such contract drawn as far back as 1215, when King John was compelled to sign the Magna Carta. That may be seen as merely a war-time expedient, but here in the U.S., we are virtually being buried in shredded contracts, falling on us out of the skies of Washington and various state capitals like ticker-tape. This regimen proceeds with the assistance of the highest court in the land, a currently far right institution that produces, at turns, obvious findings such as the right of corporations to spend unlimited company assets on political candidates in their favor, as well as a rather shocking and crass betrayal of no less significant a tenet of conservative philosophy than the sacredness of private property when it found that eminent domain extended, not merely to governments’ priorities, but to Walmart’s. The right to collective bargaining, the right to unionize at all, the right to a pension, to social security, to even modest health care, to clean air and water, to safety in the workplace, on the roads and in the skies, to a decent education, to police and fire protection, to access to free reading material, to communications of any kind not linked to the demands of the marketplace, these and more are all under attack or are already things of the past, and it is not just in New York or Terre Haute, but in London and Paris and Athens that the battle now rages.

As in all wars, there is no shortage of those true believers who, (often the most likely to lose life and limb in the conflict), will rally round the flag of battle and willingly turn their weapons on the only enemies they are capable of recognizing, namely, people just like themselves. Tragically, the last century, a time marked by previously unimagined advances in science, technology, medicine and communications, also saw previously unimaginably horrific loss of life. While one should not forget the many who have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and other flash points around the world, so far, relatively little blood has been shed. On the other hand, World War III has just begun.

Reflections on the Budget Crisis: The Panic of 2008

When my generation was taught history in high school and college, we were taught not merely about the depressions that have plagued this country, but also about periods which could only be characterized as panics. Panics took place in 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1893, 1901 and 1907. The Panic of 2008 did not display the classic historical pattern of runs on savings banks with hordes of frightened depositors storming their doors. New Deal reforms eliminated that dangerous prospect after the Great Depression. Instead, the recent panic took place in the corridors of the most powerful. That 600 trillion dollars in I.O.U.s that even Republican legislators now blithely reference in their speeches was enough to bring down so venerable a firm as Lehman Brothers and initiate the biggest bailout of the financial system in American history.

There is the temptation to characterize the panic we are currently experiencing even now, some three years after the initial shockwaves took place, as a "quiet" panic, which is to say that everyone is feeling it, but we do not have as yet, (with some exceptions such as the demonstrations that grew out of the application of the right wing remedy in Wisconsin and that are taking place on a small scale all the time across the country), a frightened and angry working class taking to the streets. The irony, of course, is that Republicans have the liberal reforms of the New Deal to thank for the relative calm that has marked American economic life for the last eighty years. The American working class is no longer accustomed to overt expressions of class warfare. Nevertheless, there is a palpable panic just beneath the surface of our collective consciousness at this historical juncture.

Another irony is that if there is a single parallel for what Americans are now feeling it is what took place among the millions in the former Soviet Union when their way of life collapsed around them. We have our own version of what is called Soviet nostalgia with millions of Americans longing for a return to a period of unbridled consumption, carefree debt accumulation and the confidence that the pre-eminent symbol of private ownership, their homes, would not only keep its value, but grow in value and serve as a bulwark against all economic perils. When Soviet communism fell, the quip was that "the party is over," well, it appears that our party is over as well, and there is the inevitable, lingering hangover and accompanying butterflies in the stomach.

Even before the Panic of 2008, there were economic elder statesmen taking to the Charlie Rose Show and other such venues sounding the alarm about U.S. deficits and growing debt. When the recent bubble was finally pricked, or more accurately shattered with a huge club crafted of the greed manifest among financial wizards who invented overly clever, esoteric investment "products" such as derivatives and collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, it merely hastened a crisis many observers had been warning us about for years.

In the brief interlude after World War II, the incredible but stubborn delusion arose that the U.S. had accumulated so much wealth that it could have as much guns and butter as it wanted, bascially forever, and had, at the same time, ended for all time the prospect of depressions and panics. By 1969, President Nixon was taking us off the gold standard, and within a few short years, Reagan and Thatcher were proving to the world that the growing clouds of economic crisis, which is to say, the growing awareness that capitalism was once again falling apart, could be dispersed by a frontal assault on Soviets abroad and social democrats closer to home.

As it turned out, communism in the U.S.S.R. and Red China proved to have been paper tigers. In fact, we needed them more than we realized, and were forced to create another global threat to take their place when the Russian regime proved to be completely moribund and the Chinese reverted to their traditional preoccupation with wealth even before Mao's body had had time to cool. By the year 2000, Chinese wags were observing that America had become its own economic back yard. The action was all overseas where millions of smart young men and women were leaving the farms for factories where they were "happy" to work for pennies an hour.

To be continued: Next, "Confessions of a Social Democrat"