Trotsky's Ghost: Part One

There was a time, not so long ago when, in cavernous New York cafeterias, men old enough to remember the events that took place in Russia in 1917 sat and endlessly argued over "a glass tea" the relative merits of Stalin's and Trotsky's approach to world revolution. For those outside of those storied circles, possessing even the most superficial acquaintance with Marxism, one phrase endures: "socialism in one country."  When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, just short of its 75th birthday, leftists on all sides of the debate must have heard that phrase echoing in their thoughts--whether they were happy to admit it or not.  Just as Trotsky had warned, socialism in one country, (or, as it turned out, even in two or three countries), seemed proven untenable.  The debate over the actual causes of the collapse of the U.S.S.R., along with the de facto collapse of Maoism in China, (particularly, needless to say, for those familiar with the left's penchant for ceaseless debate and secatarianism),  will continue apace.  A look at a political map of the globe, however, reveals a reality that seems undebatable.  Except for a handful of roaring mice like the aged Castro brothers or the teenage dictator in Pyongyang, the world has been cleansed of communist "experiments."

     For true believers, whether they subscribed to Trotsky's critique or not, what happened in the formerly communist countries was not a fair test of Marxist ideology, of communism or even socialism.  To the followers of Trotsky, his essential insight that the only lasting revolution would be a worldwide one has been vindicated by events.  Others within the left wing fold point to flaws within the regimes themselves that in a sense front-loaded them for failure.  The Chinese leadership that took over after the Gang of Four was dispatched and inaugurated the state capitalism that now rules adopted an interesting line, "Great heros make mistakes."  It is a line that is heard everywhere throughout China and has wide application--from the excesses of Mao's Cultural Revolution to, surprisingly, such historical phenomena as Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek's fall from grace and eventual exile in Taiwan.  Of mistakes ascribed to Stalin, little need be said here.

     Yet, when Vladimir Putin famously stated his belief that the fall of the Soviet Union was the "greatest tragedy of the twentieth century," one could almost hear the collective sigh of sympathy that his utterance elicited from like-minded souls around the world.  In the liberal West, of course, there is little doubt that the world is now better off for being rid of the U.S.S.R., but, on the left, there are many even among the followers of Trotsky who must be wondering.  Is socialism in no country (at least no major power) proving to be better for mankind than socialism in one country? 

     The post-Soviet era in which we are now living is one in which policy makers in the West seem not content merely to be rid of the Evil Empire(s) but see the oportunity to roll back advances made by the working classes that they were never happy to have conceded in the first place and only did so out of fear that those very masses might be seduced by "foreign" ideologies.   Thus, it is not enough to be rid of revolutionaries like the Stalinists, Maoists and Trotskyites, they have pushed the envelope to include such rather innocuous reformers as Keynes, or, for that matter, even Bismarck.

     The paradigm that seems to have been at work for some time now is one for which the cry might well be carpe diem!  "Let us roll back the reforms of the last century to a point whereby a new wave of socialist thought will have to dig itself out of a hole so deep that a counter-reformation will be nigh impossible.  When will events ever be more favorable for such a project?" 

      

    

    

A Big Chicken Comes Home to Roost

FDR, the man the right loved to hate, the man whose commemorative coin (the dime) often got painted red by his demonizers, the man anti-Semites called Rosenfeld, is seen by many historians as having in fact "saved capitalism." The neo-con revision of his legacy, however, is that the steps he took were unnecessary, that everything would have eventually corrected itself in our then crippled system if market forces had been allowed to play out. What the arguments being made before the Supreme Court right now richly illustrate is that the compromises Roosevelt was forced to make in order to keep the masses of the 1930s from getting out their pitchforks and still keep the country from the dread fate of turning into a European social democracy, (read socialist state), contained the seeds of the eventual destruction of even so sacrosanct an innovation as social security.

It is more than likely that the Supreme Court will strike down the so-called individual mandate in President Obama's health bill. There is even a strong possibility that the court will overturn the entire bill. But the consequences may be more far-reaching than that. If the court finds that governments cannot force citizens to make investments in their own future, it will not just be the health bill and social security that will fall, but the very concept of government having a role in health, education, housing, and a host of other aspects of our lives that we have taken for granted since the 1930s..

When FDR implemented his New Deal, the ruling classes saw in the existence of the Soviet Union a real and present danger to their very existence. When, in 1991, the U.S.S.R. collapsed, right wing ideologues sensed a historical opportunity to forward their agenda without opposition. Carpe diem became the call of the day. There would never be another such window of opportunity in which to roll back the advances made by the working classes. There was no longer an alternative system to turn to.

What the current debate proves is that half-way measures are always dangerous. The right is striking at the weak underbelly of liberal programs, programs that have always tried to moderate between complete laissez-faire capitalism, with its constant threat of pushing the working classes too far and into the streets, and socialism, the philosophy which has as its core tenet that governments have the responsibility of representing all of the people in a society. If the right gets its way, ironically, it may be planting the seeds of its own destruction.

The Mason-Dixon Line is Now at the Canadian Border

Although in an earlier post (The Hologram of a Republican Party) I argued that media coverage of the Republican primaries were giving us a skewed (and depressing) image of currently prevailing American values, some recent news stories have served to remind us of how it is not just the deep South or the Bible Belt that has a problem with race, science, religion, economics and foreign policy. As NPR reported this morning, large percentages of the American public--from the Candian border to the Rio Grande, can now be counted on, for example, to disbelieve the theory of evolution and the president's affiliation with Christianity. For once smug Northerners, (those perhaps whom Newt Gingrich calls the Northern "elites"), the hard to accept reality is that our problems are at bottom national problems, too widespread to be relegated to a benighted Southland. Let us not forget that the good people of Pennsylvania sent Rick Santorum to the U.S. Senate.

The story that has triggered a good deal of soul-searching about who we are as a people grows out of the killing of a young Black boy, Trayvon Martin, in Florida. When the president went on the record by noting that, if he had a son, his son would likely look just like the boy who was killed, we were guaranteed a tempest. While, on the one hand, the Trayvon Martin incident is an ugly reminder of a period when lynchings were common in the South and Black Codes prevailed, an honest Notherner will also be reminded not just of the controversy surrounding the stop-and-frisk laws being employed in New York City, but also the Sean Bell case or even the incident involving Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

Unless young people today are fortunate enough to be the recipients of an exceptional education, there are no doubt millions of young Americans who are not just ignorant of what slavery and post-Reconstruction terror under the Black Codes looked like in the South, they will also have no way of knowing that discrimination and terror against Black Americans was not exclusive to the South. And, with regard to more recent history, they will not be aware of the sea change that took place in American politics after the Civil Rights Laws of the 1960s saw the almost overnight abandonment of the South's Democratic Party, (the so-called Dixicrats), with Southern conservatives becoming Republicans, ironically the party of the abolitionists during the Civil War period. Hundreds of American cities were in flames during the "burn, baby, burn" episode of the 1960s. Combined with literally millions of anti-Vietnam war protesters taking to the streets, the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, (the year the world ended), and, twelve years later, the disffiliation of much of the white Northern working class in the Reagan Democrat phenomenon essentially gave us the political landscape in which we now all live.

Prior to the Black liberation movement of the 1950s and 60s, the U.S. had come to be viewed internationally as cousin to the South African apartheid regime. Among the memorable events of 1968 was the issuance of the Kerner Commission report which concluded that "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal." Although much has changed in the ensuing forty-five years, and the report unsurprisingly generated a lot of conservative opposition, many would argue that even the presence of a Black man in the White House cannot alter the fundamental reality of the U.S. as a deeply divided society. The Mephistophelian bargain struck by the white working class was to forfeit many of the gains it had made in the twentieth century--its union strongholds, its standard of living, its urban life style, and more--for assurances that they would be protected from an expanding Black insurrection or the imposition of a truly integrated society. In this bargain lies the key to the oft-posed question, "Why does the working class so often vote against its own interests?"

Race may not explain everything about American life. It may seem unrelated to foreign policy matters, the military industrial complex or the greed of laissez-faire capitalism that has been given license to indulge itself, but the fact is that the "race card" is still being played, and played quite effectively. It has empowered some of the darkest elements in on the American political landscape, and, for that, it is not just Southerners who are to blame.

Our Amorphous Constitutional Protections

The image to the left is not a weapon currently employed by the U.S. military; it is a drone conjured up by the creators of the "Terminator" films. As is frequently the case with science-fiction, that film turned out to be far more prophetic than most viewers could have imagined at the time. Brian Lehrer, on his NPR show here in New York, has hosted a discussion of the constitutionality of using drones to "take out" U.S. citizens said to be enemies of the state without any formal charges being brought against them or being given the benefits of a trial. In the course of this morning's program, Jack Goldsmith, a former member of the Bush administration argued that citizens who are victims of such attacks are being given due process; it's just a question of how one defines what a citizen is due. (It depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is?) The argument is further made that these executions have been given the approval of the U.S. congress.


What we are witnessing is a classic example of the paradox of "Locke's Socks," a mind experiment in which one begins with, let us say, a white sock and, then, by a series of seemingly modest alterations, perhaps a red thread here, a green thread there, we go through enough of these iterations of the sock to entitle us to ask the question, "is it still the same sock?" It is interesting that members of the right wing, who usually pride themselves on being "strict constructionists" when it comes to our constitution are unphased by the liberties presently being taken with the venerated document.


Flawed as the American constitution may be, citizens of just about every political persuasion have, for the most part, taken for granted its protections. The most egregious devaluation of those protections clearly took place during the Bush regime, but there have, of course, been precedents in our history. One need not go as far back as Lincoln during the Civil War or FDR during World War II to find that the U.S. government is capable of using war-time conditions to suspend constitutional rights. On the other hand, most Americans reeled back in horror as Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, found it was permissible to have U.S. Army tanks blast their way into an encampment of trouble-makers occupied by women and children in Waco, Texas.


What has made the recent use of drone attacks so chilling is that they are being utilized by a president who, as a candidate, appeared opposed to the use of terror, suspension of the right of habeus corpus and summary execution. President Obama's falling into line with Bush administration protocols could be written off as just one more disappointment in his actual as opposed to promised performance were it not for the fact that it seems to conjure up the unmistakable impression that there are forces determined not only to bring us back to nineteenth century economic conditions, but political conditions as they existed before the signing of the Magna Carta in the thirteenth century.


For this citizen, there is little comfort in being told that Congress has given its approval to a particular course of action, or, given its present cast of characters, the approval of the Supreme Court. And, although there were a handful of government lawyers who had the integrity to resign rather than compromise what they saw as the actual mandate of the constitution, the Bush administration made clear that it is far from impossible to find lawyers in Washington who will sign off on just about anything a president requests. (There was slight solace indeed for German Jews who were told that good, stolid German judges had found no basis for objecting to their treatment at the hands of the Third Reich.)



What does not often get expressed is the fear that the slippery slope we are presently on will one day have drones flying over Mid-Western plains or the corridors between skyscrapers in our big cities searching out pronounced enemies of the state. Once inured to overseas assassinations, will some Americans be desensitized to the prospect of taking out dangerous rabble rousers protesting some future "austerity program" designed to protect the prerogatives of the one percent?

The Hologram of a Republican Party

The inception of a Republican presidential primary season that begins almost a year and a half before the election takes place is an elaborate magic act, a set of mirrors and lasers projected into every nook and cranny of the media and designed to distract the electorate from the underlying and fundamental fact that this is a party whose primary mission is to dismantle government and impose an as yet unimagined array of austerity measures. The longer this show goes on, the more distance there is from the reality of how Republicans actually behave when they take office. Had an election taken place in the immediate aftermath of the paralysis the government experienced throughout 2010 and 2011, there is a good chance that the voting public would have come out in large enough numbers to throw the curs out of both the halls of congress. And it is about numbers. Turnout in the Republican primaries has been low in almost every state, not really a surprise when the choice is from a slate that consists of an erstwhile moderate Republican pretending to be more reactionary than he is (in an effort to energize the one constituency among Republicans that still cares, namely, the ultra-right Evangelical types who co-opted [in what has become typical Republican newspeak] the Tea Party label from a group of colonial rebels their inborn Tory inclinations would have had them opposing in the 1700s), a young man whose eyes are red-rimmed with the rapture, a has-been pseudo-intellectual from the 1990s who can barely contain his rage, and an affable country doctor who wants to crucify the country on a cross of gold. European observers, it is said, are either mystified or amused at the character and caliber of the men this country considers suitable for so powerful an office.

Though it seems to fly in the face of reason, I await another rabbit pulled from a Republican silk hat. This year’s Sarah Palin may still be, (barring some as yet undisclosed skeleton that would preclude his having a run at the presidency), Chris Christie, the current governor of New Jersey. Those who discount him because of his weight or his somewhat coarse style overlook the intelligence and deftness this former federal prosecutor displayed in imposing his austerity measures on the state of New Jersey. It is possible that none of the present candidates will go to the Republican National Convention with the required number of delegates to gain the nomination. There is a real possibility that we will be treated to a deadlocked convention and will see a “Draft Christie” movement emerge. Such drama would serve to electrify the now depressed and moribund Republican Party.

If what we have in the Republican Party at present is a hologram invented with the cooperation of the mainstream media, this is not to say that the last three years of the Obama administration have demonstrated any less political sleight of hand on the part of Democrats. By November of 2008, the Bush administration had been taken over by the permanent government types on the Iraqi War Commission and decades of Republican (and Clintonian) dismantling of economic regulation had thrown the American economy into utter chaos. Conditions were remarkably similar to those that prevailed when Franklin Roosevelt ascended to the presidency after the 1929 Crash and the ensuing depression. Obama’s election was a cri de coeur from the American people. So disappointing was the actual performance of the man the country had chosen as its savior that by the elections of 2010, most voters abstained and essentially by default allowed the so-called Tea Party types to play out a feeble version of a mass movement of the angry and the disenchanted. There would be no universal health care, no restoration—in spite of the ponderous and tepid Dodd-Frank bill—of the regulations introduced during the New Deal to rein in the greed of the speculators, no public works programs, and a stance on the crisis facing American schools that has at its center a generalized freudenschade with regard to the fact that teachers were among the remaining few American workers who still had unions and pensions. The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in the White House did not hesitate to bomb Libya back to the stone age and employs that most chilling of phrases, “we are not taking anything off the table” when it comes to Iran’s insistence on pursuing its nuclear program while remaining mute on the hundreds of nuclear warheads possessed by Israel.

Only the erstwhile communist regimes in Russia and China now fail to go along and take their cue from Washington and its allies in the capitals of Europe. Hayek and Friedman have replaced Marx and Lenin and even John Maynard Keynes. Just as revolutions are spear-headed not by the poor but by the middle class, it takes liberals like Franklin Roosevelt to save capitalism when it is in crisis. We are now, particularly in an era of globalization when conditions are not localized, on new ground. If people are a little tense right now, it is because that ground seems to be shaking.

The Speech that Obama Should Have Made

"The greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression." How many times have we heard these words since the current crisis erupted in 2008? At the risk of imposing on my good readers' patience, I here reproduce Franklin Roosevelt's innaugural address, delivered in the midst of that earlier crisis. I urge you to set aside a few moments and read it in its entirety. It is a fascinating document. Much that FDR said on that Saturday morning of March 4, 1933 has immediate relevance to the economic, social and moral conditions that we live with today, almost 80 years later.

A close reading will also reveal, after the pro forma praise of the U.S. constitution, more than a mere suggestion in the speech that FDR was willing to take on powers that were near dictatorial to get the job done. There is a lot worth considering in this speech, not all of which will make progressives happy. On the other hand, the right wing has spent the last thirty years or more trying to undo the prescription for economic and social justice that what came to be called the New Deal laid out and largely enacted. The great value of this speech is that, for this reader at least, it makes evident why that opposition is still so frenzied.


"I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.
In such a spirit on my part and on yours we face our common difficulties. They concern, thank God, only material things. Values have shrunken to fantastic levels; taxes have risen; our ability to pay has fallen; government of all kinds is faced by serious curtailment of income; the means of exchange are frozen in the currents of trade; the withered leaves of industrial enterprise lie on every side; farmers find no markets for their produce; the savings of many years in thousands of families are gone.
More important, a host of unemployed citizens face the grim problem of existence, and an equally great number toil with little return. Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment.
Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men.
True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.
The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths. The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit.
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.
Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.
Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.
Our greatest primary task is to put people to work. This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously. It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources.
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land. The task can be helped by definite efforts to raise the values of agricultural products and with this the power to purchase the output of our cities. It can be helped by preventing realistically the tragedy of the growing loss through foreclosure of our small homes and our farms. It can be helped by insistence that the Federal, State, and local governments act forthwith on the demand that their cost be drastically reduced. It can be helped by the unifying of relief activities which today are often scattered, uneconomical, and unequal. It can be helped by national planning for and supervision of all forms of transportation and of communications and other utilities which have a definitely public character. There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped merely by talking about it. We must act and act quickly.
Finally, in our progress toward a resumption of work we require two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order; there must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people’s money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency.
There are the lines of attack. I shall presently urge upon a new Congress in special session detailed measures for their fulfillment, and I shall seek the immediate assistance of the several States.
Through this program of action we address ourselves to putting our own national house in order and making income balance outgo. Our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy. I favor as a practical policy the putting of first things first. I shall spare no effort to restore world trade by international economic readjustment, but the emergency at home cannot wait on that accomplishment.
The basic thought that guides these specific means of national recovery is not narrowly nationalistic. It is the insistence, as a first consideration, upon the interdependence of the various elements in all parts of the United States—a recognition of the old and permanently important manifestation of the American spirit of the pioneer. It is the way to recovery. It is the immediate way. It is the strongest assurance that the recovery will endure.
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.
If I read the temper of our people correctly, we now realize as we have never realized before our interdependence on each other; that we can not merely take but we must give as well; that if we are to go forward, we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because without such discipline no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline, because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good. This I propose to offer, pledging that the larger purposes will bind upon us all as a sacred obligation with a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.
With this pledge taken, I assume unhesitatingly the leadership of this great army of our people dedicated to a disciplined attack upon our common problems.
Action in this image and to this end is feasible under the form of government which we have inherited from our ancestors. Our Constitution is so simple and practical that it is possible always to meet extraordinary needs by changes in emphasis and arrangement without loss of essential form. That is why our constitutional system has proved itself the most superbly enduring political mechanism the modern world has produced. It has met every stress of vast expansion of territory, of foreign wars, of bitter internal strife, of world relations.
It is to be hoped that the normal balance of executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.
I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. These measures, or such other measures as the Congress may build out of its experience and wisdom, I shall seek, within my constitutional authority, to bring to speedy adoption.
But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis—broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.
For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of the national unity; with the clear consciousness of seeking old and precious moral values; with the clean satisfaction that comes from the stern performance of duty by old and young alike. We aim at the assurance of a rounded and permanent national life.
We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.
In this dedication of a Nation we humbly ask the blessing of God. May He protect each and every one of us. May He guide me in the days to come."

Opus Dei cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus

Although the New York Times chose to relegate the story to a whimsical observation embedded in a Super Bowl article, there is currently a small tempest in congress over the removal of the word "God" from an Air Force emblem. As the net version of the U.K.'s Daily Mail reported the story:

The U.S. Air Force has provoked outrage by removing a Latin reference to God on one of its logos after complaints from a military atheist group. The Rapid Capabilities Office patch included a motto until several weeks ago in Latin saying: ‘Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money’. But this was altered to ‘Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money’ after the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers kicked up a fuss.

Mr. Forbes claimed the removal of the reference suggests the Air Force believes the word ‘God’ cannot be used in the force at all. ‘The RCO’s action to modify the logo sets a dangerous precedent that all references to God (must) be removed from the military,’ he wrote. Mr Forbes believes the change to ‘Miraculi Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus’ is not required to abide with the First Amendment. The RCO was created nine years ago to speed up weapon systems and reports to a board of directors including top Air Force officials. Mr Forbes tried to reaffirm ‘In God We Trust’ as the U.S. motto in a bill last November, but Barack Obama was unimpressed, reported The Hill. ‘I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work,’ President Obama said, reported ABC News.

Now anyone who knows the U.S. air force's "philosophy" on God's role in its mandate will not be all that surprised by the appearance of "opus dei" on one of its emblems. A few years back the Air Force Academy in Boulder was the victim of an expose which revealed that non-Christian cadets were subjected to outright coercion should they have the misfortune of being discovered to be Jewish or atheist or--God Knows--Muslim. Non-Christian students confided that their lives became hell. It is easy to imagine officers at the academy resembling the General Jack D. Ripper character in Dr. Strangelove. And let me further disabuse any reader who may be so innocent as to believe that the emblem in question is an aberration that somehow fell through the cracks. In doing research on the phrase, I came upon an often frightening piece published by Ralph Nader titled, "I COULD TELL YOU BUT THEN YOU WOULD HAVE TO BE DESTROYED BY ME -- EMBLEMS FROM THE PENTAGON'S BLACK WORLD" written by Trevor Paglin. A look at the web site will reward the visitor will numerous other examples of the obvious pride taken by various special ops types in having access to the dark world that is beyond the ken of such innocent rubes as most of us hapless Americans.

Nevertheless, the world is full of suprises. Not least of which is that there is something called the "Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers." One can't help but wonder how many members that organization has. (Another web site worth visiting for its long list of other violations of free speech and thought within the military [militaryatheists.org.]. The Air Force academy is no anomaly.) But, frankly, most surprising of all is the fact that what was found most objectionable in the Air Force's Rapid Capabilities Office's motto was its allusion to God. No mention is made in any of the--admittedly sparce--coverage of the story that addresses the remainder of the phrase, namely, "other people's money." Although it is not entirely clear what the authors of the motto had in mind, it seems to treat the--once again--feckless and naive taxpayers as "other people." There seems to exist in this nation the military ubermenschen, the 1% whose interests they protect, and then the rest of us slobs who pay for the one percent's protection.

This is a division of labor and class structure that transcends even the world William Golding created in the novel Lord of the Flies in which a group of choir boys survive a plane crash only to revert to savagery on a deserted island. For those of us trying to understand the New World Order, no Illuminati or Bilderberg conspiracy need be considered, our new world has brought us back to a tiny, fabulously rich aristocracy living in chateaus protected by good Christian knights and their neo-con squires. And it is all being played out in the open, right before our eyes. I am now designing an emblem for the rest of us. Its motto? Deus nobis!

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"

Obama Meeting Leaders From Congress on Stalemate

By MICHAEL D. SHEAR

President Obama asked House Speaker John Boehner and Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, to come to the White House on Wednesday to discuss the stalemate over the budget.

228. Vincent Amato

New York City

April 6th, 2011 8:40 pm

I have seen "the rapture" before, but never so virulently as in the aura being projected by Representative Ryan and his acolytes. That this faction was elected by the American people while the dust of the 2008 financial collapse was still swirling about is truly frightening for the fate of our republic. This writer expected--apparently out of sheer ignorance of who many of my fellow Americans are--that the bungling and greed of the financial masters of the universe would have had exactly the opposite reaction among voters. Instead, (and I can't help but blame the president's timidity for this), the impression was allowed to take hold in the American heartland that poor blacks, school teachers, retirees and the ill were responsible. The bad guys engineered a free ride for themselves.

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Moment of Truth

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: April 4, 2011

Vincent Amato, morning of April 5, 2011:

Well, David, you burnt the midnight oil on this one, covered all the bases, doled out the mandatory praise to various Republican leaders and apparently paid your dues to the Party for at least the next twelve months. It is interesting that you restrict your comments to "domestic programs," omitting any reference to the trillion or so spent on a war machine that even the sitting Republican Secretary of Defense argues is too fat. (Republican fretting over spending stops at the doors of the Pentagon.) Although this article, with its praise of Mr. Ryan, would seem to enhance his chances for a presidential nomination, I don't think that is going to happen. Ryan with his altar boy wholesomeness and intellectual patina is a bit too monastic; we'll probably see a Chris Christie candidacy; his is the perfect populist approach.

The substance of the changes you foresee and that you credit Mr. Ryan with introducing seem taken out of the pages of one of Orwell's dystopian novels. Having Ryan "grasp reality with both hands" is a nice novelistic conceit. Just whose reality is that? Even the notion that what the Republican Party is about is "reform" hearkens back to the by now long litany of right wing perversions of language and political metaphor. This is out of the same play book that in the late nineties fancied Soviet communists as conservatives, Republican strongholds as red states, and organized groups of right wing thugs as members of a Tea Party. (The last notion having stronger echoes of the South's confederates making claim to the events which took place prior to our own revolution than the original event.) Most historians trace the origins of social democracy back to the Bismarck regime in Germany. Bismarck, of course, only instituted his social welfare programs as a means of undercutting what he saw as the threat of socialism. With the demise of the Soviet Union, latter-day conservatives obviously sense the opportunity to roll back reforms that date to the 1870s, let alone our own New Deal reforms of the 1930s. The obvious goal is to completely privatize and put on a profit basis all human affairs.

The great irony in all this is that it is precisely the profiteering that goes on in our nation that is responsible for the exorbitant costs of programs that are more government inspired than government run. Our medical costs are twice that per capita of any other nation on Earth while our level of general health is far worse. Republicans conjure up citizens getting expensive CAT scans for bruised knees and otherwise taxing the medical system, while, in fact, the exorbitant cost of the American health care system is a byproduct of a moral set and a value system that finds it okay to profit--and profit enormously--from sickness. Remove the profit motive from the medical and pharmaceutical "industries" in the U.S. and the actual costs would diminish dramatically. Similar savings could be realized by once again empowering regulators at the much diminished FDA or OSHA, for example, to resume their roles as protectors of citizens' health.

And, finally, stop the charade of entitlements going to the rich as well as the poor in some false notion of equality that parallels the distorted distribution of wealth that our grossly unfair tax system has promulgated and encouraged.

(Posted to the New York Times, morning of April 5th. Will indicate later should it be printed.)