The Contemporary Condition

What Happens in Europe Doesn’t Stay in Europe

2012-01-29T13:18:00.000-08:00

John Buell
is a columnist for The Progressive Populist and
a faculty adjunct at Cochise College. His most
recent book is, Politics, Religion, and Culture
in an Anxious Age.

Reading the corporate media, one gets the impression that the travails of the Eurozone constitute a morality play with a comforting theme. Germany has been a model of fiscal rectitude amidst a sea of profligate governments that are dragging it—and the whole European Union and the common currency-- down.

However comforting this theme may be, it is wrong on several levels. For starters, the countries in Europe that are still doing relatively well—including Germany, Sweden, Denmark—have far more developed welfare states than those of such “profligate” nations as Spain and Portugal. In addition, on a more basic level, the fiscal crisis faced by southern European nations owes more to the German model, the worldwide faith in financial “liberalization,” and the single currency.

European integration proceeded out of the most unquestionable of motives. After half a century of war and the decimation of the continent, European leaders and publics sought an end to violence. What better means of reducing violence than tying nations together economically. Europeans, starting with France and West Germany, fashioned common trade agreements on iron and steel and soon went on from there to create both wider free trade zones as well as a set of common policies to govern health, safety, and civil liberties. These early trade agreements, however, did not include or require a common currency.

From the start, many European social democrats worried that more inclusive European integration would bring together nations with vastly different economic productivity levels. Preserving floating currencies would, however, give nations that experienced shocks or the loss of jobs through balance of trade problems the escape hatch of currency devaluation. But just as importantly, the Maastricht agreement, one of the pillars of European Union, required richer nations to contribute to a stabilization fund to assist poorer nations in developing their infrastructure. Such a fund was viewed as an instrument of economic justice not only for the poorer states but also for a Western European working class that feared the loss of jobs to a low wage periphery.

European integration also took place on another track, one more dominated by financial elites than by working class or even manufacturing interests. Financial interests promoted the idea of a currency union as a means of taking currency risk out of trade within the EU as and thereby facilitating broader trade and development. Corporations would not need to worry about rapid fluctuations in the relative value of particular currencies. Another agenda was in play as well. Some banking elites hoped that a common currency would function much as the nineteenth century gold standard, making it impossible for debtors to inflate their way out of debt.

The initial appeal of the common currency was not limited to the banking community. Some of the weaker European states expected that teaming up with economic power Germany would allow them to benefit from the latter’s stellar credit rating. Others hoped that they would become little Germanys.

Germans were willing to go along, but with one proviso. Any agreement must include a central bank that would operate along historic German principles so that the new common currency would continue to carry an excellent credit rating. The European Central Bank (ECB) would have to be independent and would be guided by one mandate—price stability. As Center for Economic Policy Research co-director Mark Weisbrodt puts it, “The right-wing nature of the monetary union had been institutionalized from the beginning. The rules limiting public debt to 60 percent of GDP and annual budget deficits to 3 percent of GDP – while violated in practice, are unnecessarily restrictive in times of recession and high unemployment. The European Central Bank’s mandate to care only about inflation, and not at all about employment, is another ugly indicator.”

In the prevalent morality play, German’s fiscal rectitude plays a starring role, yet the German economic model is at the core of the periphery’s economic crisis. Economists at an early November conference on the “Crisis in the Eurozone” at the University of Texas pointed out that Germany in the last decade has forged a new social compact and model of development. The basic postulate is that price stability fosters economic growth. Price stability in turn had two pegs, government austerity and a social compact between management and labor under which wages were kept flat even as productivity rose dramatically. Labor’s one benefit was a commitment to maintain relatively high levels of employment even during down times. German corporations in effect accepted some redundancies in order to buy labor peace.

The strategy worked, at least for a time, but only because of one other major factor, financial speculation. Under the new Eurozone rules, each nation retained the right to regulate its own banks even as capital could flow more freely than goods and services. Banks and governments in effect forged a common bond in the aggressive quest to pursue new sources of profit. Since prices were stable in Germany and interest rates low, its banks could take cheaply raised capital and invest it elsewhere. Elsewhere included toxic US mortgage backed securities as well as housing in Spain and commercial real estate in Ireland, among other targets. The rating agencies, including most prominently Standard and Poor's, which recently downgraded the debt of several peripheral EU nations, blessed the credit worthiness of these toxic instruments, thereby adding fuel to the fire.

The press often suggests that European banks were affected by the Wall Street 2008 collapse, but from the very start they were key players in the run up to that collapse. And since European banks were even more highly leveraged than their US counterparts, their role was very large.

The evolution of this system in effect created real estate bubbles even as it was gradually decimating the productive capacity of the periphery economies. In a recent Foreign Affairs commentary, Mark Blyth and Matthias Matthijs commented: “German lending to the eurozone has been pro-cyclical. Indirectly (through buying bonds) and directly (by spreading its exchange rate through the euro), the country has basically given the periphery the money to buy its goods. During the economic boom of 2003-2008, Germany extended credit on a massive scale to the eurozone's Mediterranean countries. Frankfurt did quite well for itself. … in 2008, Germany was one of the two biggest net creditors within the eurozone (after France). Its positive positions were exact mirrors of Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain's negative ones. Of course, as the financial crisis began to escalate in 2009, Germany abruptly closed its wallet. Now Europe's periphery needs long-term loans more than ever, but Germany's enthusiasm for extending credit seems to have collapsed.”

Once the bubble burst, governments had to take on immense responsibilities to the unemployed as well as to their banks. Spain and Ireland had been models of fiscal rectitude before the crisis. That crisis and the factors that led up to it were the cause rather than the consequence of exploding budgets.

Some conference participants pointed out the literally self-contradictory nature of the current mainstream agenda. Every European nation is now being asked to cut wages and welfare benefits in order to become more competitive and run balance of trade surpluses. But every nation in a free trade area cannot run a surplus. Someone must buy the goods. Or perhaps Europe can become like Lake Wobegon, where everyone’s children are above average. Even S and P, though without acknowledging its role in this crisis, has belatedly recognized, that: “[T]he financial problems facing the eurozone are as much a consequence of rising external imbalances and divergences in competitiveness between the eurozone’s core and the so-called “periphery. As such, we believe that a reform process based on a pillar of fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating, as domestic demand falls in line with consumers’ rising concerns about job security and disposable incomes, eroding national tax revenues.”

The European crisis, as several conference economists pointed out, could be contained relatively easily. Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis has developed one of the most detailed and widely discussed proposals. The ECB—acting on its own authority-- could buy bonds of distressed governments and refinance the loans at lower and sustainable rates of interest. With the exception of Greece, these nations could all pull debts and deficits down to manageable levels if reasonable interest costs were restored. A sensible recovery program would also include recapitalization along with central regulation of national banks. And finally, slow growth and the ECB’s relentless pursuit of price stability have been immense problems. Both ecological and economic concerns could be addressed through a European wide infrastructure fund.

The recent ECB decision to loan money to European banks accepting their risky sovereign debt as collateral is a small step in the right direction. It may buy time and prevent credit freezes. Nonetheless, it is inadequate. Loans are limited to three years maturities. As such there may be little effect on the long end of the yield curve. More fundamentally, nothing has been done to encourage growth and spending by the wealthier nations.

Unfortunately, as James Galbraith has pointed out, even more than the US case, Europe is dominated by a Calvinist mindset that equates wealth with virtue and debt with moral sloth. Germans complain about the irresponsibility of Southern Europeans, forgetting both that their banks encouraged it and that without such lending, German industry would have enjoyed smaller markets. A German working class, after years of being squeezed itself, can too easily accept such scapegoating.

These self-reinforcing trends could be reversed, but only through action on several fronts. In the healthier European states, a renewed social democracy might extend more fiscal benefits, support for wage growth, and more aggressive pursuit of shorter hours as a reward for increasing labor productivity. Such steps would benefit not only manufacturing workers but also the growing service sector as well. Demonstrations across Europe might show debtors are real people rather than crude moralistic stereotypes. A European infrastructure fund could lend more to the periphery, thereby improving long- term development prospects for the entire community.

Taking lessons from Occupy Wall Street, movements and leaders in Europe could do more to show the ways in which private investment banks have harmed both debtor nations and German taxpayers. Finally, one can even dare hope that industrial leaders in Germany might come to realize and publicly argue that austerity hardly helps them either. Stranger things have happened. Contemporary capitalism has more stresses, strains, and inconsistencies than either its defenders or even some of its Left critics recognize.

Whatever happens, we in the US have a vital albeit hard- to- measure stake in these events. An EU collapse will hurt our banks, many of which have huge credit default swaps (in effect insurance policies against sovereign debt defaults), Too many of our elite and many citizens will also continue to draw and even reinforce the wrong conclusions.

Newt Gingrich as Intellectual

2012-01-10T11:51:00.000-08:00

Tim Hanafin

Johns Hopkins University

Newt Gingrich has recovered sufficientlyfrom a few misstepsearly in his campaign to return as a real voice in the Republican machine.Apparently, we have to take Newt seriously again, if not as a bona fidecandidate then at least as the Republicans’ touted resident intellectual. Itprovides a degree of solace of sorts to realize that even that machine needs acharacter like Newt to give it legitimacy.

The ego of this intellectualis cartoonishly large. His self-regard defies parody: he once said in earnest,“people like meare what stand between us and Auschwitz.” He’s a bully, and he takeshimself seriously enough to relieve the burden on others to do so. If he’dstayed out of this year’s race, he’d merely be the national know-it-all,hectoring his many detractors and enemies from the sidelines. As it is, he’schosen to run, and he clearly thinks the presidency is his by right. OnDecember 4, Newt pronounced, “I will be the nominee”(video). On December 22, he told the entire GLBTQ and allied population that ifthey’re goingto be like that they should goahead and vote for the other guy because he doesn’tneed them.

The wayhe’s running his campaign, you get the sense Newt feels he’s doing us a favour;he seems to wonder why he can’t just do something nice for us all withoutgetting the third degree. For example, last spring Newt was observed reversinghis position on Medicare reform inside the space of three days, which piqued someinterest. However, he lost patience with answering questions about italmost immediately, pronouncingon the following Thursday, “any ad which quotes what I said on Sunday is afalsehood.” In their insolence, the media generally refused Newt’s command tothrow his words down the memory hole, and Newt was lambastedwidely for that phrase. In response, Newt’s press secretary, Rick Tyler, issueda florid press release, presented here in the form of a dramatic reading byJohn Lithgow on The Colbert Report:

Newt styles himself as a philosopherand a mandarin of policy and political vision. It’s clear he cultivatedthis cred, such as it is, to use it as a cudgel against his opponents. Toattack his intellectual pretentions on their own terms would be to miss thepoint. Take, for example, his contributionto the ‘debate’ about the so-called ground zero mosque in New York. Newt scorespoints by erroneously presenting Islam and Christianity as natural, perennialenemies and by implying the centre’s name, ‘Cordoba house’ was not a referenceto a shining example of a uniquely cooperative culture and society, but adeliberate symbolic insult, a reference to a conquest that Muslims in general,Newt implies, would like to repeat sometime soon. He concludes that American ‘elites’are too ignorant of history to realize ‘Islamists’ are jeering at them behindtheir backs. Since Spain actually stands, until 1492, as a place where a roughterritorial pluralism of sorts between Judaism, Christianity and Islam survivedfor a long time, it’s a whiggish revision of the history of Islam in Spain. Itcould have been written by a Grand Inquisitor who forgot to rail against theJews and the Protestants as well as the Muslims. It’s silly,but it’s not meant to be taken seriously by anyone who cares about the matter.He cut this history from whole cloth to paint a historical veneer over themanufactured outrage against the creation of a Cordoba House in Manhattantoday.

Newt's intellectual vanity is onlythe base of an even-grander self-image as the historical hero of the uniquenessof American civilization. In a 1997 reporton Gingrich, the Congressional Select Committee on Ethics found handwrittennotes he had distributed to his political advisors concerning a course he oncetaught called “Renewing American Civilization.” In these notes, Gingrichdescribed himself as an “advocate [and] definer of civilization,” a “teacher ofthe rules of civilization,” an “arouser of those who form civilization,” the “organizerof the pro-civilization activists,” and the “leader (possibly) of thecivilizing forces.” All of which Newt calls ‘Newt Action.’ He even drew apicture of himself undertaking ‘Newt Action’:

Credit to www.bessettepitney.net/2011/11/gingrichs-self-image.html

This hand-drawn diagram was submitted as supplementaryevidence in a congressional report on Newt’s professional ethics, and wasattributed to him personally. Of course, if you look closely you’ll see thatafter drawing himself as a tiny little stick-figure Sun King, and afterrealising, perhaps, that others might not share or appreciate his viewsvis-à-vis his own indispensability, Newt wrote, humbly, “a pattern rather thana single point.” This means, I guess, that he was willing to acknowledge hemight not be the sole cause of world-historical change. Nevertheless, whetherpattern or point, it’s all pure Newt action.

Maybe this is not thatunusual for the type of person who fancies him- or herself presidentialmaterial. I don’t think you could do that job without a huge ego. But Newttransfigures it into a gargantuan ego. It seems winning the presidency wouldbe, to Newt, the ultimate (or perhaps the only possible) vindication of hisintellect. It’s the destiny of a man with a brain like his. Or, to say the samething, it’s America’s destiny be ruled by Newt in a Newt way.

And maybe Newt believes it’s hisintellectual destiny to ascend to the presidential throne. But it is doubtfulwhether many others believe that, not even the 30% of those polled recently whoconsistently favour him. Newt’s appeal extends only as far as beingaggressively obnoxious has become a virtue in U.S. political culture, which isto say, not quite far enough yet. Nonetheless, his claim to be an intellectualmay still carry subliminal clout in the political culture. There is a largeportion of the U.S. population that feels intellectually condescended-to by‘elites,’ the media, the media-elites, liberals, liberal-elites, the academy,the liberal media, so on and so on. This is a feeling that the Republican partyfosters and exploitsas their bread-and-butter. If people like Newt, it’s because Newt puts ‘elites’ in their place. He may be a snob, but he’s theirsnob. Indeed, he may take advantage of a tendency within the liberalintelligentsia to correct false histories as if everybody should already haveknown this.

So Paul Krugman was wrong tosay Newt was a stupid man’s idea of a smart man. If the stereotypical‘smart man’ ridicules trumped-up know-it-alls for not being half as smart asthey think they are, then to a large portion of Americans, Newt and Krugman soundexactly alike. In the end, Newt doesn’t need to have real intellectualcredibility any more than George W. Bush needed to really be from Texas. Newt,like Bush, fulfills a resentful political-cultural wishes for revenge. Perhaps,in his case, the hidden attraction is to take revenge on a culture which doesnot care enough to educate its populace.

Celebrating Death, again

2012-01-02T09:55:00.000-08:00

Steven Johnston
Neal A. Maxwell Chair in Political Theory, Public Policy, and Public Service, University of Utah

For America’s elected representatives, the 2011 holiday season called for gift-giving, both material and symbolic. The recipient, if you will, was patriotism. First came the “Vow to Hire Heroes Act.” Now we have the Civil Service Recognition Act. The Democratic and Republican parties may be split on which version of neoliberal capitalism ought to govern America’s social, economic, and political life, but they can always agree on the fundamentals of patriotism, including the need to feed this insatiable affective cultural machine. Patriotism is always on guard for new sources of sustenance to maintain its glossy sheen. Nothing rivals dying for your country, unless, of course, it’s killing for your country—though when it comes to killing, the celebration tends toward the discrete.

The Civil Service Recognition Act provides for (to quote the statute) “the presentation of [a] United States flag on behalf of federal civilian employees who die of injuries incurred in connection with their employment.” It is not just military service personnel who risk—and lose—their lives working in the name of the American people (members of the diplomatic corps offer one prominent example). Nor do you need to serve abroad to have your life placed in danger. It can happen on the home front as well, a space increasingly militarized and securitized in the last thirty years.

Who would object to honoring those who 'serve' their country and pay the proverbial ultimate price? Well, the American Legion, for one. Initially, it condemned the bill, citing the following language as objectionable: “A flag shall be furnished and presented…in the same manner as a flag is furnished and presented on behalf of a deceased member of the Armed Services who dies while on active duty.” Fang Wong, the Legion’s national commander, objected to the equation of civilian and military service, privileging the latter: “Civil service workers do not sign a pledge to defend America with their lives, they are not forced to serve in combat zones, and their work routines do not include engaging enemy forces overseas.” Not surprisingly, right-wing bloggers joined in the condemnation, one describing it as “The Flags for Bureaucrats Act,” arguing (I use the term loosely) that it was “just another trapping of power available from the federal government to all those people in the ever expanding federal bureaucracy.” The statute was quickly changed, as supporters of the bill insisted no equation was intended—or possible. The American Legion supported the amended bill without hesitation. Patriotism’s love affair with death again won the day.

Still, and somewhat strangely, the ritual enacted into law hasn’t changed (a flag will still be presented). How to make sense of this? It seems that the American Legion was primarily interested in policing the terms of American political discourse. You simply cannot say publicly (this applies especially to the state) anything that seems to equate civilian and military service. The latter is sacrosanct.

What allegedly distinguishes these forms of service? Though Fang Wong won’t explicitly say it, it’s the act of killing for country that separates the two. Presumably most civilians who die in the performance of official duties do not kill, but this distinction does not always hold true—just ask the CIA. Does the exception prove the rule?

Ironically, the right-wing hysteria may be warranted, a defensive reaction designed to deflect attention from another reality not to be exposed—the mercenary character of the military forces of the United States, which are routinely showered with (more and more) trappings to join and remain in the military. If anything, the military represents the pinnacle of achievement in the American welfare state, though many Americans might be loath to think in such terms. This is the comparison that must be unthinkable, certainly unspeakable. What’s more, the real issue is not that civilian service might rise to the level of military service; the fear is that military service is no more elevated than civilian service. As Andrew Rosenthal points out, many conservatives don’t consider government jobs real jobs; well, how is it that a military career became so highly valued in a country whose founders were deeply suspicious of a standing army? Many conservatives deride professional politicians (Mitt Romney, ludicrously, tried to tarnish Newt Gingrich with this label in a recent GOP debate). While not endorsing such a judgment (I like politics), I would ask how professional military service achieved its exalted status. Shouldn’t it be something that everyone does, briefly, when young? And if a permanent military force is needed, why isn’t it on the list of America’s necessary evils (like government itself)? How is it, for example, that make-work jobs fighting an imperial war in Iraq come to be honored? How was it contributive to America’s collective project?

Finally, the Civil Service Recognition Act, ostensibly reflecting a generous political impulse, excludes and marginalizes as much as it includes and honors. It privileges forms of service informed by death rather than life. Service here functions as a euphemism for sacrifice, itself a euphemism for death. Not surprisingly, then, the thousands of citizens of the Occupy movement will receive no formal recognition for their democratic activism on behalf of justice, fairness, and the 99% (even though they, too, it turns out, risk their lives in its pursuit).

If anything, democratic activism, perhaps especially if undertaken by the wrong people, often fosters state violence and disenfranchisement. Republicans across the country have undertaken a party-sponsored program to systematically eliminate as many likely Democratic voters (openly targeting students) as possible from the electoral process in pursuit of a one-party state. Tragically, those who do in fact kill and die in the name of America’s democratic values thereby see their efforts, in the end, subverted, even destroyed, by those who deploy them with undue ease. For what exactly are they killing and dying?

The Return of the Big Lie

2011-12-03T15:27:00.000-08:00

William E. Connolly

Johns Hopkins University

The facts are well known. A recent ad by the Romney campaign ran a video allowing viewers to watch and hear the very words of Barack Obama: “If we keep talking about the economy we’re going to lose.” That quote closed a series of statements attributed to the President. But the quote was undated and, well, incomplete. It turned out that it had been delivered by Obama during the 2008 campaign. It read in full “Senator McCain’s campaign actually said, and I quote, ‘if we keep talking about the economy we are going to lose.’”

Outraged Democrats protested the ad. “Neutral” commentators said it was “egregiously misleading” and a sign that the campaign in general was going to be rough. Romney refused to apologize. He said “what is good for the goose is good for the gander”--a quote that hovers somewhere between almost saying that he could identify similar misrepresentations from Obama and expressing identification with a base that is eager to have him run such lying attack ads. A senior advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, announced that the ensuing controversy worked to the advantage of Romney because it called people’s attention to the economy: “...their reaction was quite hysterical,” he said, “But that was the point.”

The original ad was not simply an instance of misrepresentation; it was a Big Lie. A Big Lie is a representation that not only attributes to the opponent things he did not say but joyously reverses what was actually said to express loyalty to its base and disdain for the opponent. A Big Lie is joyous not simply because it misleads. It is so because it speaks to a portion of its base who welcome and demand such misrepresentations even if they are exposed as misrepresentations. A Big Lie, then, is a BIG lie, a lie expressing a perverse symbiosis between leaders and audience that allows its effects to reverberate even after it has been exposed. Thus correction of a Big Lie is insufficient to counter it. We now have a rather long record of Obama being called a Muslim, a socialist, and a Kenyan who is not an American citizen; these widely circulated charges express the characteristics of the Big Lie. And we have a record of followers of Palin and Bachmann introducing editorial changes into Wikipedia entries to alter the record so their gaffes have the look of historical accuracy. Perhaps we should think a bit more about how a Big Lie works.

A Big Lie works because the most intense devotees who receive it are eager to have it circulate widely even if and when they know at one level that the evidence points in the other direction. The repeated charge that Obama stimulus package–-which in fact was far too small--did not decrease the unemployment rate that would otherwise have arisen possesses some of these characteristics.

Adolph Hitler introduced the phrase into popularity. He did so in a vintage manner. He attributed it to Jews and the Marxists who, he said, blamed German generals for the loss of WWI instead of casting blame upon “betrayers of the fatherland”. He then said in Mein Kampf:

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true within itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily...”

Hitler only got it partly right. He universalized a tendency that varies significantly from place to place and time to time. And, at least in this statement, he does not emphasize enough how a big lie requires a constituency already primed to receive it at one level even when at another level they know it is a lie. A Big Lie speaks to multiple levels of self and culture, calling up a visceral will to believe among resentful constituencies that overwhelms their awareness at a more refined level that the evidence is at odds with that will. Even if the factual correction is admitted, a residue of distrust and vilification of the candidate is retained.

A Big Lie today contains a yet more complex, layered message. Yes, it expresses a campaign to increase intensity of support among a core constituency eager to vilify opponents. But it simultaneously amplifies a vague sense already there among inattentive moderates that politics itself has become dysfunctional. This asymmetrical combination endows the Big Lie with its contemporary power. Thus it was not surprising when the former Chair of the Republican Party, Michael Steele, in a recent edition of “Hardball”, refused to condemn the Romney ad. Instead, he treated it--if vaguely and without examples--as a generic sign that the campaign was intensifying on both sides. Politics is rough, Michael Steele says, so this sort of thing is to be expected from all parties as the campaigns proceed.

Steele’s response may seem off base and banal at first hearing. But it actually performs asymmetrical functions for two different constituencies: it refuses to take back what their most ardent followers want to hear and it justifies Romney’s Big Lie to others by equating it with all statements that exaggerate or abstract from context. It thus retains the base while also speaking to inattentive moderates and “independents” who they need to conclude that politics in general is and must be dysfunctional. A dysfunctional politics, after all, encourages the inattentive to identify with the fantasy of unregulated markets pried free from a dysfunctional state. The Republican use of filibusters works in a similar way. They want people to forget (or never notice) that they are the ones who have used this tactic more than anyone else in American history, and they want to help them remember that there is a stalemate in Congress. The inattentive who respond to the second part of that message thus vindicate themselves in remaining inattentive. Such an effect increases the power of the right edge of the Republican base, a base that is primed already to respond to messages of aspirational fascism.

There is an element of truth in what Steele says. That is part of its power. Both sides do misrepresent and simplify too often. That needs attention whenever it occurs. But to draw every instance of misrepresentation under the same umbrella is to recapitulate the Big Lie. Again, it justifies that mode of politics to a receptive base as it encourages moderates to either withdraw from politics or to internalize lies they are already tempted to believe.

The politics of the Big Lie becomes viable in a society in which one segment of the populace welcomes it, another attributes it to politics in general to avoid having to think about what it portends, and a third fails to explore how to engage a world in which factual correction is insufficient to contemporary politics.

We form part of the third constituency. We have to learn how to challenge Big Lies as we remember how factual correction is pertinent but insufficient to the challenge. Correction is insufficient because there is never a vacuum on the infrasensible register of politics. We thus have to participate ourselves on that register without allowing our participation to contribute to the Big Lie. Perhaps John Stewart provides an example of how to proceed as he enacts image laden messages with a complex character. His messages expose lies; they suggest alternatives; and they disclose by parody how his own messages themselves also work on the infrasensible register of politics.

I have tried to think about the indispensability, complexity and dangers of such a politics in “Experience and Experiment” and in some postings on this blog. John Protevi also engages this issue. In a world of 24 hour cable news and a society riven by the politics of ressentiment more reflective intervention is needed on this territory by those who seek to preserve the life as well as the form of democracy.

Vow to Hire Heroes

2011-11-26T12:09:00.001-08:00

Steven Johnston

University of South Florida

Three days before Thanksgiving, Barack Obama signed intolaw the VOW to Hire Heroes Act, a pieceof political legislation of, at best, dubious economic value. It offers tax creditsto employers who hire veterans. Both parties lined up to support the bill knowing full well that it amounted to little more than political pandering. Despitethe fiscal crisis supposedly plaguing the American state, the legislation foundfew if any detractors. The debt owed the brave men and women who make enormoussacrifices to keep America safe, secure, and free rendered discussionirrelevant. The United States military is perhaps the only institution thattranscends the fanatical obstructionism of the Republican Party, an entity sohell-bent on free market utopianism (among others) that it continues to inflictenormous damage on the country and its future. Good patriots that they are,Republicans no doubt believe that harming the country they love is proofpositive they love it (with a partial exception for Ron Paul). True, former RepublicanSenator and Defense Secretary William Cohen recently took the GOP to task forendangering the country’s national security with its anti-tax hysteria, butCohen issued his rebuke not on behalf of the well-being of the United Statesbut of the American empire.

Does the United States military deserve the plauditsroutinely showered on it? This is an open question. For one thing, it is not acitizen army composed of people serving their country in the spirit of equalityand mutual obligation. It is a self-selecting professional mercenary force. Toomany Americans clearly prefer to have someone else shoulder the responsibilityfor common security. They have other and better things (the list is endless) todo with their lives. This might seem (tothem) like a free ride without repercussions, an attitude no doubt fostered bya culture of exceptionalism. Nevertheless, entrusting a free way of life toguns-for-hire enables adventurist presidents like George W. Bush to endangerthe country at will without genuine fear of domestic blowback. The militarydraws for support on regional cultures, perhaps especially in the south, thatthrive on war and the warrior ethos. They tend to support overwhelmingly thevery party and policies that place them in harm’s way and exact such staggeringtolls on them and their families. It’s a tangled web of narcissism, masochism,and sadism, which I cannot explore here.

The imperial adventures they authorize, whether deposingSaddam Hussein from power in Iraq or fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, donot involve American safety, security, or liberty, widespread legitimizingrhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. To keep American forces deployedworldwide for longer and pointless engagements, the country keeps throwing anincreasing number of benefits in their direction, both material and symbolic.Mercenaries must be compensated.

Meanwhile, Occupy Wall Street participants offer and risktheir lives in the name of democracy. They do so not only without prior promiseof remuneration from an obliging state but also with a reasonable expectationof downright indifference from a highly depoliticized country. Suchindifference enables, even encourages police forces from coast to coast toabuse and assault fellow citizens with a sense of impunity.

Mayors from New York to California invoke concerns forpublic hygiene and equal access to public space to justify their militarizedresponses to democracy in action. New York’s mayor, learning from a previouspublic relations disaster, planned, in secret, a late night raid on ZuccottiPark to clear Occupy Wall Street activists. Bloomberg’s late night pincermovement resembled the totalitarian tactics of the secret police in the SovietUnion depicted so brilliantly by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It’s not that thethuggish behavior of American mayors, high-ranking campus officials, and theirpolice auxiliaries doesn’t provoke outrage: witness the effective response to the UC-Davis Chancellor,the suspension of the Davis Police Chief, and the Berkeley Academic Senate’s vote of no confidence scheduled for Monday, November 28 against that school’schancellor for police violence against students of Occupy Cal.

Still, the outrage tends to be unduly confined to the alreadylike-minded. It does not produce widespread disgust followed by real politicalconsequences. We are not (yet) Egypt. Bloomberg’s career should have ended withthis vicious middle-of-the-night assault on citizens. Of course, it should alsohave ended following the 2004 GOP Convention in New York where similar police state tactics were implemented against citizens enacting democracy as GeorgeBush waged his personal war of choice in Iraq, but as the recent GOP debate inWashington suggests, no politician will pay a price for sacrificing civil andpolitical liberties in the name of security. Why is it that most Americanstolerate, even cheer, police violence against citizens? Is it thatidentification with gratuitous displays of state power allows them to imaginethat they themselves also possess agency in a world that routinely and rudelyreminds them they are impotent?

Occupy Wall Street protestor & USMC Sgt. Shamar Thomas shares his views on police repression with NYPD officers (full video here).

Back to patriotism and economics: You would think theOccupy Wall Street movement might generate a jobs bill to assist the unemployedmillions who are entitled to as much consideration as war veterans. No, theyare entitled to greater consideration, for these activists actually contributeto democracy by bringing it to life. They do not spread death across the globein the name of freedom or nation-building. The students who were brutalized atUC-Davis need no lessons in courage from camouflaged warriors who won’thesitate to go into battle as long as thousands of others are willing to dolikewise, as William James famously claimed. (This is one reason James scornedtraditional war memorials.) If heroes should be employed, start with thecourageous citizens who risk life and limb and occupy space in America’s majorcities on behalf of the 99%. A major jobs bill might even stave off theeconomic collapse that looms on the horizon, thanks in part to European recklessnessand intransigence. Such collapse would likely be accompanied by widespreadstate coercion singling out the usual political suspects for blame, applaudedby a majority always in need of scapegoats. Think of it as Sinclair Lewis’snightmare come true.

Overcoming Shame: The Rhythm and Resonance of Occupation

2011-10-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

John Protevi

Louisiana State Univeristy

Deleuze and Guattari say in A Thousand Plateaus: "Ideology is a most execrable concept concealing all of the effectively operating social machines." I take that to mean that we have to thematize political affect to understand "effectively operating social machines." From this perspective, the real "German Ideology" is that ideas are where it's at, rather than affect. It's political affect that "makes men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation."

Why won't "ideology" cut it? It doesn't work because it conceives of the problem in terms of "false consciousness," where that means "wrong ideas," and where "ideas" are individual and personal mental states whose semantic content has an existential posit as its core, with emotional content founded on that core, so that the same object could receive different emotional content if you were in a different mood. (There are lots of ways of thinking about cognition and emotion, without even bringing in the relations of this "analytic" vocabulary with that of the Husserlian noesis/noema scheme. Still, I hope this will suffice just to get some traction on the problem.)

Thus to take up the great poster, "Shit is fucked up and bullshit," the core act posits the existence of shit, and then we express our emotional state by predicating "fucked up and bullshit" of it, whereas we could have predicated "great and wonderful" if we were in a different mood.

But that is "execrable" for Deleuze and Guattari, because it's far too cognitivist and subjectivist.

It's too cognitivist because it founds emotion on a core existence-positing act, and too subjectivist by taking emotion to be an "expression," something individual that is pushed outward, something centrifugal. For them, emotion is centripetal rather than centrifugal, or even better, emotion is for them the subjectivation, the crystallization, of affect. Now DG do have a corporeal / Spinozist notion of affect involved with the encounter of bodies, but they also have what we could call a "milieu," or "environmental" sense of affect. Here affect is "in the air," something like the mood of a party, which is not the mere aggregate of the subjective states of the party-goers. In this sense, affect is not emergent from pre-existing subjectivities; emotional subjectivities are crystallizations or residues of a collective affect.

To take a concrete example: what counts in the effective social machine demonizing welfare in the USA is the shame attached to receiving public aid without contributing to society with your tax dollars. It's shameful to have lost your job or your home; you're stupid, a loser to have been in a position to lose it, and you're a lazy, stupid loser if you haven't found another one, or if you never had one in the first place. You arrive at this American shame by aggregating individualized, subjectivized, packets of shame; you get shamed subjects as crystallization of the collective affect of shame in the American air.

And so you don't combat this shame by trying to change individual people's ideas, one by one, with information about unemployment trends; you combat it by showing your face, by embodying your lack of shame, by putting a face on unemployment or homelessness. You thus counteract the existing collective affect by creating a positive affect of, shall we say, joyful solidarity. Shame isolates (you hide your face); joyful solidarity comes from people coming together. It's joy released from the bondage of shame, to follow up on the Spinozist references.

Oakland Occupation Re-takes Snow Park, Holds Vote, Approves General Strike, Forces Mayor Kwan and Oakland PD to Back Down, Blares Michael Jackson's Thriller.

What's especially heartbreaking, then, about the We Are The 99% Tumblr site, is that so many people still have some shame, as they only peak out from behind their messages. Hence the importance of the Occupy meetings; shared physical presence, showing your whole face: these create the positive affect, the shamelessly joyful solidarity needed to overcome shame fully.*

Fighting the residual shame, the half-faces of private pictures sent to a website: that's what makes the collective occupation of space so important: bodies together, faces revealed, joyously.

This is a simple, powerful talk by Judith Butler at OWS, calling upon the classic "very well then, we demand the impossible" trope, and ending with the wonderful line, "we're standing here together, making democracy, enacting the phrase, 'We the People'."

And here's the text of a longer talk by Butler in Venice about constituting political space while acknowledging the material precarity of bodies, developed alongside a critical analysis of Arendt's notion of a political "space of appearance." The overall aim is set forth here, I believe:

a different social ontology would have to start from the presumption that there is a shared condition of precarity that situates our political lives.

A brief excerpt from the beginning of the talk sets out some of the main lines of thought:

assembly and speech reconfigure the materiality of public space, and produce, or reproduce, the public character of that material environment. And when crowds move outside the square, to the side street or the back alley, to the neighborhoods where streets are not yet paved, then something more happens. At such a moment, politics is no longer defined as the exclusive business of public sphere distinct from a private one, but it crosses that line again and again, bringing attention to the way that politics is already in the home, or on the street, or in the neighborhood, or indeed in those virtual spaces that are unbound by the architecture of the public square....

But in the case of public assemblies, we see quite clearly not only that there is a struggle over what will be public space, but a struggle as well over those basic ways in which we are, as bodies, supported in the world – a struggle against disenfranchisement, effacement, and abandonment.

Oakland Occupiers Trying to Help a Fellow Activist in a Wheelchair Escape the Tear Gas While the Oakland PD Fires Rubber Bullets and Lobs Flash Grenades in the Name of 'Breaking Up a Fire Hazard.'

I'd like to add something here about the way the human microphone works, quite literally, to amplify the constitution of political space by assembled bodies. The human microphone offers an entry into examining political affect in the enacting of the phrase "We the People" at OWS. It shows us how direct democracy is enacted by producing an intermodal resonance among the semantic, pragmatic, and affective dimensions of collective action.

For some time now I've been fascinated by William McNeill's Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Harvard, 1995). McNeill studies the political affect dimension of entrainment by collective bodily movement as in communal dance and military drill. J Scott Kelso has all sorts of small scale examples of entrainment, analyzed using dynamic systems modeling. A famous macro example is the Millenium Bridge episode. Colwyn Trevarthen has studied mother-infant inter-corporeal rhythms in terms of "primary intersubjectivity." I put a lot of this research together in an essay in Theory & Event.

The upshot of this research is that humans fall into collective rhythms easily and that such collective rhythms produce an affective experience, a feeling of being together, an eros or ecstasis if you want to use classical terms, the characteristic joy of being together felt in collective action.

So I wonder if the human microphone, an invention of the OWS assembly when NYC banned electric bullhorns, doesn't contribute a little to the joful collective affect of OWS. (Needless to say, the prospect that the human microphone might aid in the production of such collective joy frightens the right-wing commenters.) It's not quite a choir, but it's a chorus, and so the bodies of the chanters (their chests, guts, throats, eardrums) would be vibrating at something close to the same frequency, something close to being in phase.

Now I'm not a reductionist; the semantic cannot be reduced to the corporeal; the message isn't dissolved into the medium. What interests me is how in the human microphone the message (enact the phrase "We the People") is resonant with and amplified by the medium (collective rhythm). In her Venice talk Butler analyzes the Tahrir Square chant translated as "peacefully, peacefully" in these terms:

Secondly, when up against violent attack or extreme threats, many people chanted the word "silmiyya" which comes from the root verb (salima) which means to be safe and sound, unharmed, unimpaired, intact, safe, and secure; but also, to be unobjectionable, blameless, faultless; and yet also, to be certain, established, clearly proven[1]. The term comes from the noun "silm" which means "peace" but also, interchangeably and significantly, "the religion of Islam." One variant of the term is “Hubb as-silm” which is Arabic for "pacifism." Most usually, the chanting of “Silmiyya” comes across as a gentle exhortation: “peaceful, peaceful.” Although the revolution was for the most part non-violent, it was not necessarily led by a principled opposition to violence. Rather, the collective chant was a way of encouraging people to resist the mimetic pull of military aggression – and the aggression of the gangs – by keeping in mind the larger goal – radical democratic change. To be swept into a violent exchange of the moment was to lose the patience needed to realize the revolution. What interests me here is the chant, the way in which language worked not to incite an action, but to restrain one. A restraint in the name of an emerging community of equals whose primary way of doing politics would not be violence.

This is an insightful, eloquent analysis of the pragmatics and semantics of the chant. So it's not to undercut it that I call attention to the material dimension of the resonating bodies that accompany the semantic content and pragmatic implications of this chant. It's to point to the way in which an analysis of material rhythms reveals the political affect of joyous collectivity, and the inter-modal (semantic, pragmatic, affective) resonance such chanting produces.

So I'm going to propose that a full enactment of direct democracy means producing a body politic whose semantic ("we are the people, we are equal, free, and deserving of respect in our precarity and solidarity"), pragmatic (the act of respecting and supporting each other the assembly performs), and affective (the joy felt in collective action) registers resonate in spiraling, intermodal feedback.

Reinventing the dead: United 93

2011-10-22T14:28:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnston

University of South Florida

September11, 2011 marked the tenth anniversary of what has come to be known, bothnationally and internationally, as 9/11. Lest anyone forget (not that this waspossible, of course, in the United States), we were inundated with reminders inthe months, weeks, and days leading up to the commemorative ceremonies thattook place in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville,Pennsylvania. As with prior anniversaries, the proceedings unfolded as if theyhad not been elaborately planned and choreographed.

Thisyear Shanksville seemed to receive greater attention than it has in years past.Perhaps this was due to the significant progress made on the national memorial at the crash site. Perhaps it was due to the dominant patriotic narrativethat has emerged surrounding United 93. Regardless, former Presidents Bill Clinton (video) and George W. Bush (video) delivered solemn yet stirring remarks to honor and salutethe murdered passengers. The story they told: Like the first responders in NewYork, it was suggested, the passengers of United 93 took decisive action underextraordinary circumstances. Insofar as al Qaeda’s coordinated attacks on theUnited States amounted to a declaration of war, the passengers on United 93staged an insurrection and converted a revolt into the first counterattack inthe global war on terrorism. Though it cost them their lives, they weresuccessful. The passengers of United 93, who morphed from hijack victims tocitizens to patriots in the course of this flight, saved countless livesthrough their selfless actions. Their example endures as an inspiration to therest of us, who must find a way to match their heroic service. The romance ofthis narrative is undeniable. It could even be argued that within its frame,the story has a happy ending: evil defeated, good triumphant and confirmed

The 9/11 Commission Report is the source for this patriotic legend. That it containsfictional elements will surprise no one. Did the passengers of United 93actually save lives? Though treated as certainty, the evidence is ambiguous andinconclusive. There were fighters in the Washington area that might have shot it down or crashed into it kamikaze-style. Many want to deny this possibility because it seems to detract from the actions of thepassengers of United 93. Either way, the hijackers apparently remained incontrol of the plane until it crashed and the cockpit recording suggests thatthey crashed it to prevent the passengers from assuming control. This was the hijackers’backup plan. If the primary target (most likely the United States Capitol)could not be reached, the plane was to be crashed, which would still be counteda success. In short, the hijackers may have failed to reach their initialintended target, but they did not fail, not according to the terms they set forthemselves.

From The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

Thedominant narrative that shapes the fate of United 93 disallows precisely suchan account. The story that we (must) tell ourselves cannot countenance anythingother than American agency in control of events, to say nothing of an Americanvictory. The story of United 93 is thus a struggle over the terms of death.Murder must be made politically meaningful and the extraordinary actions ofordinary people lend themselves to creative recovery. They had to die and diewillingly, for that is how they proved themselves (and the country) to beexceptional—ordinary no more but patriots for the ages. What does it mean,however, for the official narrative to claim that the passengers of United 93 sacrificed themselves to save otherswhen they were going to die already and knew it? This is not a question to beasked, at least not on a patriotic memorial occasion. That’s not why the country was “celebrating” 9/11, to quote Rudy Giuliani.

PaulGreengrass’s United 93 (see the trailer here) might constitute a more fitting memorial to the passengersof United 93 precisely because it is not a patriotic rendering of events. Thepassengers, unnamed in the film, took action after they learned or realizedthree things: the World Trade Center had been attacked; the pilot and co-pilotwere either seriously injured or dead, but certainly not flying the plane; andthe plane had descended to such a low altitude that the hijackers had nointention of landing it. At this point, the passengers knew they had to act ordie. In their midst was a trained pilot who, with assistance, might have beenable to land the plane if the passengers could gain control of it (and ignoringfor the moment the presence of fighter planes that might have downed it). Justminutes before United 93 crashed, the cockpit voice recorder registered the following words from one of the passengers:“In the cockpit. If we don’t, we’ll die.” In other words, the passengers ofUnited 93 acted in the name of life—their lives, the lives of their loved ones,with whom many of the passengers were speaking during the last moments of theflight. They did not act for the country, but out of a spirit of resistancethat characterizes life itself. This makes them no less remarkable or admirable;if anything it renders them more human. Why do we need to convert them intosomething other and supposedly greater than what they were? Doesn’t the country’scommitment to death (to killing and dying for it) normalize righteous anger, hate,enmity, and a false sense of innocence and exceptionalism? Doesn’t thecountry’s easy embrace of a horror story, in which sacrifice of life forcountry trumps the value of life itself, reflect and further an affectivepolitical orientation that resonates with the possible advent of fascism, a prospect recently explored by Bill Connolly? People should beware the kind of commemoration also knownas the making of patriots.

Marxism as Spiritual Bypassing

2011-10-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

Timothy Morton
U.C. Davis

Having read the transcript of Žižek's talk at OWS several times, and having listened to it (stirring in the main), I think I discern the outlines of how he will, if true to form, eventually wash his hands of the affair.

Just as the protesters in the UK recently were at some point accused of not being well organized enough, so will the OWS protesters fall afoul of a critique from Žižek. But who critiques the critiquer?

I think I can discern the form of Žižek's critique: it will be an accusation of narcissism. The seeds have already been planted:

There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. We have a nice time here. But remember: carnivals come cheap. What matters is the day after. When we will have to return to normal life. Will there be any changes then...

Now before I talk about narcissism per se I want to talk about the accusation of narcissism, which I find identical to a certain Buddhist critique of a certain pathologized version of spirituality called “Western Buddhism”—now not only by Žižek, but also by many others. So it's a relevant detour.

The accusation is often made from the standpoint that seems to be “above” or “beyond” “mere” immersion in affect, which is judged beforehand as bad. Narcissism is said to be bad self-reflection, like a self-swallowing snake (Hegel's phobic image of the Buddhist meditator, ironically lifted from Hinduism).

What if we were to turn the tables a little here and do a Hegelian reading of the subject position from which the accusation is staged?
In order to do this, I want to take another detour through a phenomenon well known to people who change their religion, for instance Christians who become Buddhists. The Buddhists who are psychotherapists or are in some kind of therapy are often accused of not being proper Buddhists. Since the self is an illusion, why care for it?

Well the technical answer is, that you make the accusation itself from the very point of view of a “self,” even though you say there is no self. This is similar to the eliminativist materialist position (which also uses Buddhism, viz. Metzinger). The assertion that there is no self is made by something that for all intents and purposes walks and quacks like a self. Metzinger would be annoyed if I pointed this out? I rest my case.

“Wherever you go, there you are” (Buckaroo Banzai, Husserlian philosopher of the 1980s).

Moreover it is the non-therapy Buddhists who are making a mistake. They are doing what is known as spiritual bypassing. This is when you have a lot of pain, and you just try to yank yourself out of it into some transcendental sphere, and think you've become a proper Buddhist. But eventually you have a lot of problems in your life, that are not solved by your self-yanking. So you may become disillusioned.

Becoming a Buddha definitely means transcending the human. But to know how to do that, you have to be a human first. My teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche talks about the importance of attaining a “healthy human being level” before you jump. So while he pokes fun at what he calls the “California practitioner,” who has figured out how to have a good time as a human, it seems necessary that we pass through a Californian stage in the dialectic.

The accusation of narcissistic pleasure seeking comes from a place of wounded narcissism. The false jump into Buddhism seeks to skip the painful step of facing that wound.

Which brings me back to Žižek's accusation of narcissism. Is it perhaps the case that a certain kind of Marxist is guilty of doing exactly what the fundamentalist Buddhist is doing—jumping over a necessary dialectical step?

Might this be because in essence there is nothing wrong with narcissism? If I had a dollar for every time a narcissistically wounded person accused someone else of narcissism …
Narcissism is just an ego-syntonic feedback to yourself. If this feedback gets disrupted or wounded, you can easily develop syndromes such as borderline personality disorder, psychopathic personality disorder, or yes, indeed, narcissistic personality disorder. There is a difference between a personality disorder and mere narcissism.

The Tibetan for narcissism is champa: it just means kindness and it starts with yourself. Monks are taught to give a ball to themselves by passing it from one hand to the other. Eventually they are ready to die for the other. Take it away Jacques Derrida:

There is not narcissism and non-narcissism. There are narcissisms that are more or less comprehensive, generous, open, extended. What is called non-narcissism is in general but the economy of a much more welcoming and hospitable narcissism. One that is much more open to the experience of the Other as Other. I believe that without a movement of narcissistic reappropriation, the relation to the Other would be absolutely destroyed, it would be destroyed in advance. The relation to the Other, even if it remains asymmetrical, open, without possible reappropriation, must trace a movement of reappropriation in the image of one's self for love to be possible. Love is narcissistic...

In a larger view, is this one significant reason why revolutions often fail—why they can devolve into endless cycles of recrimination and pathologization?

So let's cut the carnival some slack.

Great White Hope: The National Martin Luther King Memorial

2011-10-05T16:58:00.000-07:00

Char Roone Miller
George Mason University

The U.S. census recentlyreported that the incomegap between the richest and the poorest in the United States has doubledsince 1968 (from a ratio of 7.69 to 1 to 14.5-to-1 in 2010), the United Statesis currently active in not one butthree major wars, and there are more black men in American prisonstoday than there were slaves in 1850. You don’t need a crystal ball, or a giant granite one, to know MartinLuther King’s response to this condition.

In spite of the justifiable andtouching power the new Martin Luther KingMemorial on the National Mall in D.C. takes from our nostalgia for theCivil Rights Movement of the 1960s, it fails to move us any closer tounderstanding or realizing how a living monument to King's dream requires ourresistance to militaristic and economic forms of oppression. The Memorial whitewashes any sense of King asactivist, disrupter of power structures, and critic of economic systems. It hides the struggle demanded by King.

A figural 30 ft-tall sculptureof MLK emerges partially formed from a block of granite, called The Stone ofHope, which appears to be the middle third of a giant boulder, sliced out andpushed from between the other two slabs of rock—The Mountain of Despair—towardsthe tidal basin on the National Mall. The colossal white granite memorial, located at the cartoonish addressof 1964 Independence Ave., SW DC, sternly faces the Jefferson Memorial, withits back towards the Lincoln.

None of the fourteen quotationscarved into the wide marble wall that arcs around and behind the statue of Kingrefers directly to King's work against economic injustice. One quotation, from his Nobel Prizeacceptance speech, does suggest the audacity of his desire that all peoplereceive three meals a day. Unfortunately, this phrase becomes a touching platitude when removedfrom demands for state action or public policy. The architect carved two additional quotations onto the sides of thestatue of King, including one that has provoked significant criticism in whichKing appears to be describing himself as a “drum major for justice.”

King’s original quotation suggested that hedidn’t mind being deprecated in the service of the cause even if critics wantedto call him a “drum major for justice.” Exactly the meaning suggested by the redaction; Maya Angelou said thatedit made King look like an "arroganttwit." The Foundation missedthe point, but, worse, they missed an opportunity and wasted valuable spacewith a clichéd phrase, when King authored so many pithy statements ofpurpose. King's remarks, for example,concerning the seat of the national government are remarkably appropriate fordisplay in Washington DC: “We will placethe problems of the poor at the seat of government of the wealthiest nation inthe history of mankind.” The statementsdisplayed on the memorial fail to provide much meaning to King’s vision, evenas they strategically lack any reference to his economic demands.

This shouldn’t be toosurprising. In spite of their repeatedattempts to destroy organized labor, suppress wages, and general success atshifting wealth to the very rich, major corporations paid for thismemorial. Coke, Ford, Target,ExxonMobil, BP, FannieMae, JPMorgan Chase @ Co., NFL, McDonalds, and LehmanBrothers all donated to the Memorial and are listed on the majorcontributors page. General Motorsdonated $10 million. Wall-Mart gave $1million. The Foundation proudly proclaims the faith these major donors have inKing’s dream. “By their generoussupport,” the website proclaims, “they’ve demonstrated something trulyremarkable. They’ve shown the breadth ofsupport that exists for Dr. King’s vision, from the man on the street toboardrooms on the fiftieth floor.”

Thoseboardrooms, high above the people occupying the street, did not offer large donationsin order to memorialize the fact that King was assassinated in 1968 while inMemphis supporting striking sanitation workers; that just days after herhusband’s murder Coretta Scott King and 42,000 people peacefully marchedthrough Memphis to demand that the Mayor of Memphis recognize the sanitationworker’s union; that at the time of his assassination King was hard at work onthe Poor People’s Campaign. Neither Walmart nor Target,companies that have dedicated massive financial resources to fighting laborunions, could be expected to memorialize King’s vision for the power oforganized labor. Certainly not Coke, with its history of fighting unions inGuatemala and accusations that the company has used prison labor in China, andits probable complicity in the death of union organizers in Columbia. These donors, I claim, paid for a Memorialthat would help us forget that the revolution, as GilScott-Heron sang, "does not go better with Coke." They got what they paid for; the Memorialdoes not offer any sense of the stern criticism King would certainly directtoward the labor practices of many of these companies. The problem is not that they gave money forthe Memorial, it’s that the Memorial fails to display the conflict thosedonations have with King’s labor advocacy. “We call our demonstration acampaign for jobs and income,” King wrote, “because we feel that the economicquestion is the most crucial that black people, and poor people generally, areconfronting.” (A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writingsand Speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., Pages 67-69) Simply allowing the Memorial todeliver King’s message concerning the importance of organized labor on amonument paid for by labor busters would offer a better representation of thestruggle that King advocated.

Corporations were not the onlydonors, nor were they the only donors with labor policies in serious conflictwith King's struggle. The Memorial, asmany have remarked, was created in China. The Chinese government, probably the largestsingle donor to the memorial, gave the foundation $25 million--the U.S.government only gave $10 million in matching funds. The Foundation naively denies that theChinese donation influenced their decision to create the memorial inChina. Union representatives in theUnited States protested the contract with China and eventually received apromise from Johnson that union labor would be used to assemble the monument inthe United States. Then in September oflast year, the union discovered that the Foundation had reneged on this writtenpromise and that unpaid workers from China were working on the Memorial. Harry S. Johnson, president and CEO of theMemorial Foundation, evoked a hypocritical claim toracial harmony to hide the issue of economic exploitation. On September 8, theFoundation asserted: “While 95% of thework is being done by American workers, we strongly believe that we should notexclude anyone from working on this project simply because of their religious beliefs,social background or country of origin.”

TheFoundation consistently gestured toward pluralism and artistic integrity tomake the exploitative dimension of their economic choices disappear. According to Ed Jackson Jr., the ExecutiveArchitect on the project: “The granitefor King's statue was chosen because when lit at night, it lends a brownishtone to King's likeness. The stone, however, only exists in China.” though, headded, “some wanted it to come from the United States.” All the white marble on the National Mall,whether from China, Italy or New Hampshire, gets darker when the sun goesdown. Jackson’s ridiculous claim aboutthe color of the statue raises another, more obvious, question: why not use black granite? Martin Luther Kingwas Black.

Birmingham, Alabama King Memorial

TheFoundation’s decision to represent Dr. King in white granite treats the colorof his skin as a peripheral issue, when in fact it made King who he was. King certainly looked to a time when peopleno longer made judgments of value based on the color of skin but in the UnitedStates white has never been the neutral absence of color. That the Foundationchose white as an abstracted representation of King continues, regrettably, thesocial positioning of whiteness as neutral, which requires the production ofother colors as derivative or deviant.

Theassertion, given broad currency in the 1960s, that “black is beautiful”highlights a politics of aesthetic taste. The color and shape of the statue ofKing appears as a visual and sensual event. The body with its attractions (ofcolor, shape, size, strength, weakness, etc.) functions as a political triggerfor desire and emulation. Plenty of ourresponses to the appearance of the human body are beyond and before ourunderstanding of actions, arguments, and behaviors. Such responses are animportant part of our political life. Monuments operate in this field. King’s physical appearance moves us; King deserved a monument that wouldmove us.

Binghamton, New York King Memorial

Tobuild a colossal statue to King on the Mall is to represent him in many of theterms that have solidified white male privilege (with its connections tonational and imperial forms of domination). The representation of emperors,kings, and presidents in sculptural form often presented the leader astranscending the limits of the body. Itis undoubtedly an important moment when the body of the son of a Blackpreacher, himself the son of a sharecropper, appears as a giant white god.

Itis inescapably necessary to represent King in earlier categories of power andvalue but the valuable struggle comes in using that positioning to undercut theborrowed hierarchy. Borrow the trappings of power but only to transform theterms of success. Take some money from Coke but spend that money to support theColumbian food workers union, SINALTRAINAL. This Memorial fails because it never displaysthe struggle necessary for political life. King’s life was a life of this struggle.

King's arrest for 'loitering,' 1958

It’sexciting to see Martin Luther King Jr. occupying such select space on theNational Mall but we can’t afford to loose his critiques of the forms of valueand prestige that the Mall and its Memorials represent. Lehman Brothers and Coke may have paid forthis Memorial but the real monument to King are the activists occupying Wall Street and DC in an attempt to transform notions ofprivilege and power through conflict and struggle.

Aspirational Fascism

2011-09-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

William E. Connolly
Johns Hopkins University

In an earlier post, entitled What Was Fascism?, I responded to a set of right wing pundits who treat social democracy, liberalism and a welfare state as modes of fascism. The logic behind that equation is simple: unregulated markets promote consummate freedom and rationality; state regulation of markets stifles both and produces irrational intervention in the daily lives of people. One point of my post was to remind people what these revisionist histories seek to forget: Drives to European fascism were triggered above all in the thirties by the advent of the Great Depression; and that Depression was produced by practices of market utopianism. While market utopianism was not itself fascistic, the collapse it fomented helped to spawn fascist movements in several countries and to intensify them in others. Only a few actually succeeded. But the results were devastating.

There were several characteristics of fascism the first time around. It was virulently anti-semitic, propelling death camps in its most extreme version. It also defined social democrats, communists, homosexuals and the Romani as degenerates, deserving to be placed on the dumping grounds of history. Its racism with respect to non-Europeans was virulent. Where it succeeded, it introduced a one-party state, disallowing electoral challenges, to say the least. The success of fascist movements, when they did succeed, was spurred by a dark series of resonances between the state, industrialists and local vigilante groups who spread terror in the streets. These versions of fascism were also capitalistic. Profit and ownership of the means of production were private. Fascist capitalism replaced the myth of market self-sufficiency by one of exclusionary national unity, brownshirts, bellicose militarism, police repression and aggressive war policies.

It is thus a mistake to equate every large state with fascism, as the radical right loves to do under the umbrella of market utopianism. In fact, it is difficult to find a capitalist state anywhere that is not also a large state, though the priorities of such states do vary significantly.

2008 RNC National Convention St. Paul, MN

One critic of that post suggested that I had merely pretended to read Hayek. Hayek, of course, was an early purveyor of the view that regulated markets promote a fascist state, though socialism was his key target. He presents an uncanny mixture of the insightful and the fanciful: a fascinating account of freedom, spontaneity and social processes of self-organization; a utopian view of market processes as the only place such processes occur; and a homogeneous suspicion of any large state, however distinctive in aim, accountability, and organization. He was not a friend of aspirational fascism. A critique of Hayek, joined to a corollary appreciation of his early engagement with complexity theory, could thus be timely. He was, for instance, wary of any association between the state and religious enthusiasm. It is too bad, then, that he confined the play of spontaneity and real complexity to economic markets, setting into motion an ideological movement that denies the role of spontaneity and self-organization to social movements and, indeed, to a much larger host of interacting human and nonhuman domains (See The Fragility of Things). Welcome to the world of under-regulated markets and rapid climate change, Mr. Hayek.

2011 Texas Wildfires Bastrop, TX

What about aspirational fascism today and the possibility of its enactment in America? Its reoccurrence, if it happened, would express some continuities with the past punctuated by a series of significant differences. To detect hints about those affinities and differences, we can listen to Republican, Tea Party candidates such as Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich; we can heed the expressions of hate and ugliness regularly spouted by an active minority in their audiences; we can recall the Tea Party’s willingness to shut down the government to support the ends of a minority movement; and we can attend to repressive police practices already underway in American cities. Here is what such listening suggests:

1) Neo-Fascism, if it were to arrive, would not take the shape of one party rule. The media, corporations, the state, and vigilante groups together would cow constituencies on the middle and the left. The minority party would offer only weak resistance to the policies of the right, and some sections would collude with it.

2) Anti-semitism, while hovering in the wings, would be displaced by virulent opposition to all Muslim groups, within and outside the country. Gays, feminists, professors, atheists, and union leaders would also be on the list of enemies. The war on terror would morph, as it is always on the verge of doing, into a war on Islam as such. The most right wing tendencies in Israel would be supported enthusiastically, even as calls to make America a more Christian nation intensified. Those two apparently incompatible drives can be sustained in some circles by saying that the first stage of Armegeddon will arrive in Israel, to be followed by the Second Coming in which only Christians are rescued. You don’t need to worry about the devastation of the earth if you are waiting for the Second Coming; you don’t want to if you are committed to a neoliberal image of production, consumption and markets. Such a combination, to the extent it succeeded, would silence a large and growing section within Christianity that eagerly supports a pluralist culture.

3) Carbon based sources of energy for production, consumption and military operations would be celebrated and extended. The dangers of fracking and nuclear power would be ignored. Climate change would be ridiculed. And imperial operations designed to protect traditional modes of energy would be launched.

Hydro-Fracking Run Off

4) As the effects of climate change foment suffering and disorder in several regions, the United States would become even more of a garrison state, invoking massive state power to barricade its borders and creating a series of wars in vulnerable or oil rich regions.

In Violation of the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act U.S. National Guard 'Lends a Hand' to the Border Patrol and So Called 'Citizen Soldiers'

5) As market utopianism, unlimited corporate campaign money, and state repression grows, inequality of wealth, income and communicative power would become even more extreme. Attempts to protest these developments would foment more intensive modes of state and media repression to disparage and silence them. You might think that the Supreme Court would help here, but its recent drive to give more rights to corporations as “persons” than to living persons is hardly reassuring. The majority of the current court participates in the ideology of market utopianism.

Crack Down at Wall Street Occupation

6) As the combine of market utopianism and state bellicosity grew, another world wide market collapse would almost certainly occur. It is an open question whether China would escape its effects. The right would draw upon the suffering promoted by that collapse to pursue even more intensely market utopianism. Since a perfectly free market is always a chimera promised for a fanciful future, you can always blame the latest failures on too much market regulation and taxation of “job creators”.

Chinese Military Trying to Cope with the Sichuan Earthquake. The Earthquake's Devastation Was Magnified by China's Intense Poverty and Urban Density.

6) Vigilante groups, already discernible in this country, would grow in size and type, seeking to silence alternative voices as they infiltrate localities, churches, corporations, and universities. The state and the police would enter into covert alliances with them.

Such a new type of fascism is certainly not inevitable. It does, however, operate as an aspiration in some circles that already makes a big difference in our politics. It also could occur, if a major terrorist event encountered a Republican President and Congress. It poses a real danger.

In the Immediate Aftermath of Pearl Harbor FDR Interred 110,000 Americans of Japanese Heritage. Although Reparation Were Paid Korematsu v. U.S. Still Affirms the Constitutionality of Racial Internment.

The immediate question is how to criticize market utopianism more effectively as we identify the dangers it promotes, the denials it demands, the suffering it fosters, the unfocussed anger it unleashes, and the repressive, militaristic state it solicits to sustain its fantasies. Above all, how can we awaken a large constellation of “Independents”--who first try to ignore politics as much as possible and then become susceptible to slightly softened versions of right wing sound bites when a crisis emerges. Here Mitt Romney, perhaps, is even more dangerous than Rick Perry, as he exudes a willingness to be the soft voice of a rampant minority movement. The secret of the neoliberal/evangelical machine resides in the way that it promises smooth markets for the future as it feeds off crises of today it helps to foment.

Barack Obama, for all his eloquence, is not good at exposing these drives and dangers. Paul Krugman, for all his economic insight, does not crack through either. Academic radicals have insufficient reach and connections on their own. Steve Colbert and Jon Stewart show merely a few flashes of brilliance in this regard. What then? Some noble intellectuals in the American Jewish community are now speaking out actively about the American/Israeli/Palestine quagmire. A forthcoming documentary by Bruce Robbins at Columbia University is promising in this regard. Recently, I have begun to wonder whether Rachel Maddow and Elizabeth Warren might provide hope in exposing the insidious character of this machine to a wider audience.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

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World of Class Warfare - The Poor's Free Ride Is Over

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One thing seems clear, however: it will take enhanced participation by more people in the micropolitics of families, churches, unions, localities, consumption cooperatives, universities, the new media, protests, and corporate exposes to pave the way for the social movements and electoral coalitions needed today. Connections to social movements in other countries are critical too. In these respects protest movements on Wall Street and in Wisconsin, along with militant protests against austerity in England, Greece and elsewhere may be promising.

The NYPD Keeping the Streets Safe for Casino Capitalism (Updated)

2011-09-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

Continental Pilots Join Wall Street Occupation on Behalf Their Union ALPA

Baseball, Leisure, and Chocolate Chip Cookies

2011-09-14T12:32:00.000-07:00

John Buell is a columnist for The Progressive Populist and a faculty adjunct at Cochise College. His most recent book, Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age, will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in August.

Periodically I fall asleep while watching a late night baseball game from the west coast. I have invested in a Major League Baseball package that allows me to choose almost any game every night, but by far the preferred choice is Dodger games. I am a fan of announcers as much as teams. And the former are more stable than the latter, which have become interchangeable parts on a money- driven merry-go-round. My choice of Dodger games owes nothing to Brooklyn or Los Angeles loyalty but rather to appreciation of and fascination with the voice of the Dodgers, Vin Scully.

I have been especially attentive to Dodger games this season. Prior to the start of the season, Scully had announced that this would be his last as Dodger broadcaster. The other night, however, Scully surprised us, albeit with a characteristically soft-spoken announcement.

An admirer had a long tradition of sending him chocolate chip cookies, and this year her gift was accompanied by a note that the cookies were a bribe to entice him to return for another season. As I drifted off to sleep, I expected him to thank her and then explain why the time had come to hang up the microphone. His response, that he would return for his 63d season, both jolted me out of my sleep and led to some reflections on age and retirement. Even if he really loves those cookies, Scully is returning to the booth because he is healthy and loves his job. Many older Americans toil on also out of love for the office, even when they could easily afford to choose the golf course. Sadly, however, an increasing number, even in declining health, are forced to keep working due to America's inadequate social protections not out of love for their work; this is where we all as a society strike out.

Scully is both typical and atypical of his generation. As an announcer, he is without equal. For me he almost defines the genre. Unlike any other announcer today, Scully works alone, with no ex- player to provide the 'color' commentary. And hype is not his style. For him, no baseball game determines the future of western civilization. His commentary resembles a quiet, literate conversation with his listeners. The other day he congratulated both Japan and Huntington Beach for their long run in the Little League World Series. Both had played great ball, but only one could win. 'It's a game, after all.'

Scully reminds me of Ernie Harwell, long- time radio voice of the Detroit Tigers and a fixture of my youth. Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson has commented that the LA Dodgers

boasted sports' greatest, most literate and entertaining broadcaster, Vin Scully. (I've long believed that kids who grew up listening to Scully got at least a 30-point bump on their verbal SAT.) Always the most spatially and governmentally scattered of cities --- there are 88 municipalities in Los Angeles County --- L.A. lacked most forms of common civic identity until half the town began listening to Scully.

Like Harwell's, Scully's commentary is peppered with stories about the players' lives and families. Recently during a scorching Sunday afternoon from Dodger Stadium, Scully regaled us with tales of how players used wet mattresses and cabbage under their hats to cool off in pre-airconditioning times. As with all modern commentators, he has a plethora of statistics upon which to draw, but he does not overwhelm the fan with numbers. I especially appreciate several features that seem unique to his broadcasts. When a runner lands on third, Scully will invariably inform us of the number of wild pitches the pitcher has committed over the season. And when pitchers bat he tell us what percentage of the time they have struck out, a figure that gives a better sense than mere batting average as to whether or not they are klutzes at the plate. My favorite Scully touch is a sixth inning feature, 'This Day in Dodger Baseball,' wherein he tells a story of an event or personality in the long history of the Dodgers, stories often drawn on his own conversations with the players.
Longevity in the US has increased and seniors are working longer, both out of choice and necessity. Nonetheless, I bristle at the increasingly popular idea that because longevity has increased and many seniors are doing excellent work well into their eighties, it is no big deal if the Social Security retirement age were to be increased from 65 to 67.

I look around my own working class community with its fishermen, boat builders, carpenters. Despite talk of post-industrial society, much work remains physical and is literally back-breaking. (Such service professions as nursing carry enormous physical and emotional burdens.) And increases in longevity, as Dean Baker has pointed out, are heavily class- skewed. Upper class citizens have more control over their work environments, generally do less physically stressful work, and have better and more regular access to quality medical care. Increasing the retirement age is another attack on the wallets and the health of poor and working class citizens, often depriving them of the few years of retirement to which they can look forward.

Baker also points out that any social security shortfalls, which are exaggerated to begin with, could be alleviated by removing the cap on earned income subject to social security taxation. Much as I like Vin Scully, I believe he and other well compensated professionals working long years at jobs they love should see all of their income taxed, just as is the case for my neighbors, most of whom have few choices about their work.

In a broader sense, the issue of retirement raises profound questions about modern capitalism.At least as far back as the twenties, capitalism's most outspoken defenders promised a future of both material gains and more free time for all. And indeed, despite US capitalism's frequent failures to tap its full human and technological potential, worker productivity has greatly increased. Yet for a quarter century Americans have seen stagnant incomes, longer workloads and no opportunity to trade any wage gains for increases in leisure or earlier retirements.

Source: The New York Times, Sept 4, 2011

Preserving and lowering the social security retirement age and taxing all earned income would be a small step in the right direction. But for now I am pleased that Vince Scully will stay another year so that I can use my own leisure time to revisit and refashion my memories of the summer game.

The work of human hands

2011-09-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

Davide Panagia
Trent University

There is little doubt that the circulation of appearances is an anxious fact about our contemporary condition. This is made even more acute by the proliferation of events and objects in and through which we interface with appearances, events and things like photography, film, cooking, video games, music, shuffling, paint, apps, reading, advertising, opinion polls, tweeting, posting, and so forth. The Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan - who would have celebrated his one hundredth birthday this year - was influential in disseminating the idea that each medium is unique in the ways in which it handles appearances in the world, whether text, or image, sound, or touch; and through such handlings, extends our own ways of handling the world.

Today, the various media themselves seem to matter less and less because they are becoming ever more fluid: we handle cell phones as easily as we might a camera, or a tablet. However, one thing does seem to stand out as perhaps the most available form of mediatic interface – namely, the screen. Whether cell phones, computers, tablets, televisions, cameras, or what have you, we are living in an unprecedented age of screen exposure, as Kevin Kelly once remarked in the pages of the New York Times Magazine: “Everywhere we look,” he said in 2008, “we see screens.” (“Becoming Screen Literate”, November 23, 2008). This may have made sense 3 years ago, but today we should re-write Kelly’s sentence to say that “everywhere we touch, we touch screens.” Rather than simply sophisticated viewers, we are becoming sophisticated handlers, ‘absorbed by the immediacy of the screen’, as the American popular culture writer, Robert Warshow, affirmed in 1954. [For more on Warshow, I highly recommend the very accessible and extremely well written collection of his essays published under the title The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002].

“BurkaNike” by Pode Bal

The irony in all this is that despite our well-documented mediatic iconophillia, we have allowed ourselves to accept the idea that anything that appeals to our senses is bad for us, that we are all unconscionable fools because we become absorbed by things that appear before us, that appearances can only tell us lies and condemn us to a life of sin. In this, we persuaded ourselves of a moral theory of the image that says that the only true things in the world are the things we can know, and everything else is ‘mere appearance’, so that all instances of the allure of appearances operate within the same moral and perceptual registers as advertising, or pornography, or both.

If this looks and sounds too polemical - but nonetheless familiar - it is because such reactions have perpetually accompanied cultures of image-proliferation, from the ancient Greeks and Jews, to the early Christians, to the Byzantine iconoclasts, to the Protestant Reformation, to Walter Lippmann, to The Matrix movie, and Wikileaks. All these instances of iconophobia are reactions imbued and embedded with aspects of the First Commandment (the one against idolatry), and they appear and reappear to warn of the damage that appearances can do - to the mind, to the soul, to the eyes, and to the body. Here is what one Biblical prophet has to say about it, in Psalm 135:

15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold,

the work of human hands.

16 They have mouths, but do not speak;

they have eyes, but do not see;

17 they have ears, but do not hear,

nor is there any breath in their mouths.

18 Those who make them become like them,

so do all who trust in them!

The message is clear: “if you don’t stop it, you’ll go blind!”, so to speak. And this lesson rings as true today as it did during its penning. Idols are artifices who appear real but are not - they seem to have all the external qualities and sensory capacities of humans, but none of those things work; appearances are the living dead, vampires, or alien apparitions. And what is worse, the risk of our interface with them is contagion or prodding – if we interface with them, we will become like them. The message of the first commandment, and of these few lines from Psalm 135, is the message of all critique that treats the luminosities of appearances as an instance of deception (this is what it means to be duped by an appearance and thus to be affected by its collusive forces).

I want to suggest another approach to what I call the advenience of the appearance (i.e., its ingression to experience) that takes as a political fact of our contemporary condition that our handling of appearances informs our handling of one another, and that this matters to our senses of politics. It matters to our senses of politics because our handling of appearances multiplies and pluralizes our pictures of political resistance. To treat appearances that advene - on a computer screen, or on the television monitor, or on our cell phones, tablets, etc. - exclusively as claim making entities available to our cognitive understandings takes the fizzle out of those intervals of friction that pose resistances to our ways of interacting with the world.

London’s Burning: Tottenham. August, 2011

A case in point is the recent riots in London and the looting/burning of the Croydon and Tottenham suburbs. Even a tertiary scan of the comments and reactions to this event suggest that they are entirely ensconced within the moral theory of the image I outline above. ‘What we are seeing’ - so we are told – ‘are a bunch of unproductive hoods who have nothing to do other than destroy private property and steal what they otherwise cannot afford to own because they don’t have jobs.’ They are the unthinking, whose time wasted has numbed their minds. They have eyes, but do not see; ears, but do not hear: they have become the consumer products they desire and trust. From the perspective of a moral theory of the image, the scandal of the London riots is exactly the scandal prophesied by the Reverend Thomas Malthus in 1798 in his classic study on the (then) new political economy, “An Essay on Population.” In those pages he outlined exactly how the putting in place of the Poor Laws would - in no uncertain terms - increase sloth amongst the lower classes and create the kinds of attitudes and customs (i.e., lewdness, irresponsible procreation and childrearing, etc.) that we have been told were responsible for the London riots.

Now, several things seem to me worth mentioning in response to the moral theory of the image that governs our general perceptual attitudes: the first is to reiterate a point raised by David Harvey worth making over and over again [see his “Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets”]: looting is a “feral” attitude that neoliberal capitalism created and has been more than happy to defend as a standard modus operandi - just consider, in the US context, whether the sub-prime mortgage disaster isn’t a form of feral looting?

The next point worth mentioning is a point made by the cultural and political philosopher, Jacques Rancière: what I’m calling the moral theory of the image is an instance of a certain mode of thinking that does not want you to stop, look, and see. “There is nothing to see here!” (Ten Theses on Politics, Theory & Event 5.3) is the message we learn from the knee-jerk condemnation of the rioters; that is, there is nothing worth paying attention to because we already know what is wrong with this picture. “There is nothing to see here!” also means that there is nothing political about what has happened. This is a lesson that was parlayed over and over again by the media. ‘The looters have no political agenda’; they’re just looting for the sake of looting. But as Laurie Penny notes, “The truth is that very few people know why this is happening. They don't know, because they were not watching these communities. Nobody has been watching Tottenham since the television cameras drifted away after the Broadwater Farm riots of 1985.” [Panic on the streets of London]. There is nothing to see here, so don’t bother looking.

In all of these quick and easy condemnations, little mention has been made of the fact that levelling and looting is a customary practice in British popular politics, at least since the time of the Levellers during the English Civil Wars. Levellers were defenders of liberty in the most literal sense of the term, who would act politically by rioting and destroying property. The attribution of their name comes from a practice they espoused of levelling hedges during riots that divided property lots. The Levellers did not have a set political agenda; they were god-fearing folk who were broadly committed to abolishing government corruption. You can find a selection of their writings here, if you want to learn more. My point, simply, is that levelling and rioting have been, since the discovery of modern liberal toleration and natural rights, a standard political practice autochthonous to British popular rule.

So, in fact, there is something political to see here: namely, that leveling or looting is a mode of resistance that – however unattractive it might be – stands as a form of political action. That Prime Minister David Cameron has elected to call for the eviction of looters and rioters from their homes as a form of punishment for their actions might also suggest that not only does looting and rioting stand as a mode of political action, but that it has juridical consequences (see here; and for a response to Cameron’s appeal, see the ‘Not in my name’ petition here).

This brings me to my final point: to disregard the [recent] London riots as unpolitical and not worthy of our attention is to miss an opportunity not only to address a serious socio-economic problem, but also a potential occasion to re-imagine our pictures of political resistance. This is not to say that we should all turn to Levelling; it is to say that the advenience of an appearance - like the images of looting, or levelling, or rioting - marks an interval in our habits of sensing; to regard an advenience is thus to allow the possibility of an effrontery, or a friction, that bothers us to the core. We are right to be bothered by the London Riots, and it is worth our political while to attend to this irritation.

I will conclude with this provocation: Recent events like the London Riots suggest that the political dilemma posed by neoliberal capitalism is not the adjudication of the priority of the right over the good, or the determination of the good as a right; the political challenge is, rather, the interruption of circulation. And to disregard the multiple portfolios of resistance available through our experiences of advenience, because such experiences persist and subside in a pre-cognitive and pre-judgmental dimension of existence, is to miss significant political opportunities for interrupting the dominion of flow in neoliberal capital. The attitudes of disregard I describe above are moral images of thought complicit and consonant with the increased capitalisation of everyday life.

An ‘Israeli Spring’? Popular Protest and Political Resignation Converge on Tel-Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard.

2011-09-05T14:43:00.000-07:00

Daniel Bertrand Monk,
Colgate University
Daniel J. Levine,
Colgate University
When young Israeli professionals erected a tent city on Tel Aviv’s Rothschild Boulevard in protest against the Netanyahu government’s indifference to an affordable housing crisis in Israel, they self-consciously modeled their efforts on the popular revolutions commonly referred to as “the Arab Spring.” Handmade signs reading “Rothschild, Corner of Tahrir” invite us to make comparisons between the style of this ‘Israeli Spring’ and the events in Cairo that brought down the Mubarak regime last April. Many commentators have done so as well.

“Among the many handmade signs in the Israeli protests is this one prominently stating: “Rothschild, Corner of Tahrir.”

On the face of it, the Netanyahu government’s response invites a similar comparison. Like Mubarak, Netanyahu seems to have been surprised by the extent and commitment of Israel’s “Facebook” revolution. In an echo of Egyptian officials’ efforts to discredit the Tahrir protesters as servants of foreign interests who were selling their loyalties for boxes of fried chicken, Netanyahu’s allies dismissed the Tel Aviv protesters as spoiled “nargileh-smoking, sushi-eating” children. Netanyahu’s cronies, it is true, stopped short of intimating a connection between the Rothschild protesters and al-Qaeda. But the Israeli political milieu provides its own vocabulary for delegitimizing comparisons, as when right-wing Knesset Member Miri Regev (Likud) called the protestors “leftists,” and compared them to Israel’s “Black Panther” movement of the 1970s. Only after 300,000 Israelis took to the streets on August 6 demanding a reordering of national priorities did Netanyahu make public statements indicating that the demands of the protesters were legitimate, even as he sought to buy them off with promises of reform and a blue ribbon commission.

"An Israeli matron reads about the previous night’s protests in a Tel-Aviv café. The newspaper’s headline: “Israel in the Streets. 300,000 protestors. A New Land.”

As with their counterparts in Egypt, none but the most naïve of Tel Aviv’s new “urban Bedouins” have considered the Prime Minister’s proposals to be anything but cynical. Most have vowed to stay the course in the tent city on Rothschild Boulevard even after the rains come to Israel in November. “This regime of capital will crumble,” stated Yossi Baruch, spokesman for the largest tent city in Haifa, in response to the PM’s promises to expedite the construction of 50,000 new low-income housing units as part of a new Housing Committees Law. Many of the protesters see this legislation as little more than an additional giveaway to developer-tycoons allied with the political establishment.

"3 years military, education, job...no housing"

Though pleasing in their symmetry, these parallels between the Tel Aviv and Cairo demonstrations are misleading. Indeed, in one critical respect they are the reverse images of one another. Participants in the Arab Spring deflected the claims of tyrannical rulers in Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt: threats to national security by Israel or fundamentalist extremists were no longer to be accepted as excuses for again deferring democratic/parliamentary reforms. In an already intensely ‘parliamentary’ Israel, the tent dwellers oft-stated demand for social justice is a deflection, but of a very different sort: an attempt to deny the very real place that the Israel/Palestine conflict holds on the conditions they seek to change. At “Rothschild, corner of Tahrir,” seemingly supra-political demands – the attempt to posit ‘social justice’ as somehow beyond politics as presently understood and practiced in Israel – constitutes an act of denial.

"Could we have a piece of the pie"

The Rothschild Commune provides its own best evidence of this denial. A walk down the tent city from north to south does, indeed, disclose a nerve center of committed geek-hacker-activists and university students who demonstrate remarkable discipline, organization, and clarity in their efforts to roll back Israel’s neo-liberal turn. These people are the ideological core of the movement. But prominent in the mix are also the remnants of Labor Zionism (like the youth group Hashomer Hatza’ir), activists for divorced fathers’ rights, organizations demanding the end of exemptions from military service for yeshiva students, religious ecstatics (“Na-Nach-Nachma” offshoots of Breslov Hasidism who dance on sound trucks when they are not sleeping off the bliss in their tents), and, most incongruously, members of the notorious ‘Youth of the Heights’: second or third-generation settler-hippies, the hash-smoking but also highly militant counterculture of the West Bank settlements. Tel Aviv’s tent city, then, is itself a “big tent” in which space is obtained by a tacit commitment to avoid party politics entirely.

“The Tent City on Rothschild Boulevard functions as a commune, with free haircuts, seminars, music, religious services, and Arabic lessons”

Eretz Nehederet, Israel’s equivalent of The Daily Show, satirized this situation brilliantly. When its host asked a cast member playing Dafni Lif (the original organizer of the tent protests on Facebook) “what are your demands?” She replies: “Um…the People demand the things everyone agrees on…about…them”). Chiding the host for insisting that she specify the movement’s aims, Lis merely reverts to the most repeated of the protestors’ slogans: Ha’am Doresh Tzedek Chevrati (“the People Demand Social Justice”)

"If you will it, it is no dream"

In its very construction, the slogan itself – the People Demand Social Justice – discloses the denial at work here. A reaction to the nation state’s political fragmentation appears as a demonstration against social stratification. In shouting ‘The People Demand Social Justice,’ everyone involved in the Rothschild ‘revolution’ agrees to act as if the social and economic consequences of placating settlers, ultranationalists, and the ultra-orthodox – all united by a shared material interest in perpetuating the occupation – has nothing to do with the government’s inability to provide for the needs of ‘the People’. To get 300,000 people onto the streets of Israel without causing a counter-demonstration on the following Saturday night, Israelis identifying with a bazaar of essentially incompatible political positions have tacitly agreed to pretend that Tel Aviv has joined the wave of popular protests in Madrid, London, and Athens against the ‘structural adjustment programs’ that western economies used to impose upon the global south and have now turned against their own citizens.

But the numbers belie this. Israel’s curious coalition of the disaffected has emerged in an economy that is enjoying higher growth in real GDP than Bahrain, Brunei, and Oman. In sharp contrast to Athens or Cairo, Israel has almost halved its unemployment rate since 2003, and 80% of its wage earners are employed in service industries. Many of the “urban Bedouins” of Rothschild Boulevard get up every morning, zip up their tent flaps, and go to work in the high tech sector. If nearly one quarter of Israel’s citizens are now falling below the poverty line (and if its middle class has “vanished,” as former Israel Manufacturers Board chair, Dov Lautman claims), it is because the government of Israel is forced to maintain the costly infrastructure of two para-states – one for the ultra-orthodox and another for the settlers – before it can even begin going about its own business.

"Commenting on right-wing politicians’ dismissals of the protesters as bourgeois ‘sushi-eaters,’ the Rothschild protesters made a carnival feature in which the average Israelis can see how ‘they are themselves served up as the ‘shakshouka’ [a breakfast stew] to sate the appetites of politicians and oligarchs.”

As we have argued in a previous essay in this series, this ‘retreat of the state’ was largely ignored in a period when most still Israelis felt they had a stake in general economic expansion. For Prime Minister Netanyahu and his cronies, this amounted to a welcome ‘indifference dividend’ concerning the cost of purchasing enough political consensus to maintain a parliamentary majority. But the pie can only be cut so many ways. The issue now is that the maintenance of the para-states is rapidly becoming the government of Israel’s only business, as surrogates for market interests in the Netanyahu administration clamp down on all other spending. The result is a political double standard. Political transfer payments to settlers and ultra-orthodox are accepted as the cost of doing business. For everyone else – from the education and health care systems to the fire service, whose collapse due to sustained budgetary neglect left much of Israel to burn in forest fires last December– an ideology of austerity prevails. There is no addressing “the people’s” demand for social justice without facing this.

"School of the Revolution"

This is why there is something about the Rothschild Commune that fails to persuade. Despite the earnestness of its members, the movement sublimates the political causes of a contemporary crisis by protesting its social effects, and in so doing advances the same curious logic by which the Baron Munchhausen professed to have pulled himself out of the swamp by pulling at his own pigtail. At the same time, there is something important to be learned here. What the current wave of protest teaches us is that in Israel the stalemated politics of the occupation are no longer apprehended directly, but are, instead largely experienced in terms of the costs that come with a capitulation to the occupation’s advocates and beneficiaries. In the everyday life of Israeli civilians, the Israel/Palestine struggle has rapidly become an unacknowledged and at times unconscious resource war between those In Israel who have a stake in the conflict’s perpetuation and, as various protest posters put it: “everyone else.”

In itself, this attempt to wish away an increasingly zero-sum dispute between those whom we have elsewhere called Israel’s ‘statists’ and its ‘radicals’ is nothing new. It draws on a tradition in Israeli state building that is older, in fact, than the state itself. The earnest belief that what appear to be political divisions are in fact administrative or technical problems has a long legacy. From Herzl’s Altneuland (1902) to Shimon Peres’ Imaginary Voyage (1998), the fruits of rational economic and social administration are presumed to dissolve political disagreements – well-stocked hospitals, efficient rail lines, electric streetlights can displace zero-sum contests over the status of the land and the nature of the polities to emerge on it.

It is through such denial that the demonstrations can now somehow not be about ‘politics’ – the moral, economic and human costs of the radicals’ interest in the occupation, and its basic incompatibility with the liberal-parliamentary ideals of Israeli statists. A protest that called that other, deeper, division by name would differ as markedly from the present one as would a Berkeley ‘teach-in’ from a Sorellian general strike. That, we submit, is the true difference between the protests in Rothschild Boulevard and those in Tahrir Square.

Whether by intuitive or intentional cynicism, Netanyahu has been playing on this kind of denial, as when he reportedly cited Herzl’s ‘pragmatism’ to Manuel Trajtenberg (head of his new blue-ribbon commission on Israel’s socio-economic crisis) as a model for his willingness to take seriously the protesters’ demands. It will do Mr. Netanyahu little good. His brand of cynical reason can no more protect the political status quo from the consequences of the bourgeoning ‘resource war’ than the protestors’ enthusiasm for unstated alternatives to the same status quo can protect them from a nasty confrontation with Israel’s ‘radicals’. Given the prevailing level of denial and displacement, one is left to wonder if—when the confrontation between the radicals and ‘everyone else’ comes out into the open—any of the unfortunates caught in the melee will have any idea why.

“Fragile, reads a protest poster displaying the official emblem of the State of Israel.”

Why Do Republicans Hate America?

2011-08-03T23:24:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnston

University of South Florida

The political struggle over the nation’s debt, for Republicans anyway, is a battle over government itself. At least since Reagan, Republicans have not really cared about deficits, not as a matter of fiscal principle or prudence anyway. Rather, they seek to wage internecine war against both the idea and reality of government and in this ideological battle the issue of deficits can be a useful weapon, especially if it can be linked somehow to the issue of taxes, which must always be cut. Revenues can never be understood, let alone experienced as a form of social investment. Creating and accumulating large deficits enables Republicans to call for, even demand large reductions in government spending and programs, regardless of their consequences. The strategy is referred to as starving the beast.

Republicans, of course, cloak themselves in the rhetoric of freedom and necessity and express concern about future generations. That the beast they would slay ultimately translates to the lives of American citizens, including some of the most vulnerable who depend on government social programs to which they enjoy legal, political, and moral entitlement, is irrelevant. Hatred of government is a disease with them. They loathe common purpose and project, especially when channeled through the state. Their hatred of government, it seems to me, is tantamount to hatred of country.

It’s time to rethink Republican ideology, aspirations, and rhetoric and ask: why do Republicans hate America? I would ask: why do Republicans hate their country, but I don’t think Republicans, crystallized in the so-called Tea Party, have any sense of belonging to, taking pride in, or sharing a greater common enterprise, that is, a country. Rather, they tend to worship at the altars of casino capitalism, this or that fundamentalist church and its social dogmas, and, perhaps most of all, the untrammeled self.

Consider the following. Republicans have suggested dismantling Medicare and would like to do the same to Social Security. These are two of the greatest public collective accomplishments in American history. Modest as they are when compared to many European countries, they have nonetheless provided generations of Americans with financial security and protected many of them from impoverishment. Yet it is the very success and popularity of these programs that incense Republicans such as Paul Ryan and fuel their furious determination to be rid of them. The same dynamic is at work in Republican hostility toward landmark Civil Rights legislation and protections, remarkable public achievements on behalf of racial equality, which they routinely seek to eliminate and portray as obsolete and infringements upon fundamental freedoms. Why do they hate America?

Republicans also regularly work to subvert America’s system of public education. They try to divert as many dollars as possible to charter schools and other mechanisms that privatize secondary education. Chronic under funding enables Republicans perpetually to condemn the many shortcomings in American education that fiscal starvation itself helps create. Current financial crises allow them to fire teachers and invoke poorly performing schools as evidence that public education doesn’t work in the United States. As for state university systems, Republicans seek to convert them into corporatized spaces where education is reduced to mere instrumentality. Train, don’t educate. Reduce faculty (nothing but leftists anyway), enlarge classes, accelerate graduation schedules, and raise tuition rates so students won’t be such a drag on state budgets. It is the very success of public education (training future generations of citizens and professionals) that infuriates Republicans. Why do they hate America?

Republicans detest public transportation. Governors such as New Jersey’s Chris Christie refuse federal (stimulus) money for light rail and commuter trains in metropolitan areas that desperately need it. That investment in critical infrastructure would put people to work, relieve traffic congestion, benefit the environment, stimulate the economy, and make for a better future count as strikes against it. America’s greatest cities (New York being the most famous instance) would be unthinkable without vast networks of public transportation and other services, but Republicans detest cities such as New York and resent the public collective genius they represent. Why do they hate America?

You might think that the national landscape would be of concern to everyone. The United States possesses countless distinct natural wonders and the government enjoys responsibility to preserve them for generations to come. But rather than make them accessible to Americans to enjoy in common, Republicans would prefer to sell them to the highest bidder and see them developed for crass commercial gain. A form of public or common treasure must be converted into individual assets. As for protecting gifts of nature from pollution, the country from self-poisoning, and the planet from self-destruction, Republicans tend to be aggressively hostile—just drill, baby, drill. At times, this takes tragicomic forms. The House of Representatives recently passed a bill to prohibit funding a 2007 law increasing light bulb efficiency. One indignant Republican Congressman insists: “the federal government has no right to tell me or any other citizen what type of light bulb to use at home.” As for the Republican who authored the light bulb measure and secured its passage into law, he now opposes it. Why do Republicans hate America?

The only collective public activity that Republicans endorse is war, on behalf of which they suddenly become spendthrifts (prison-building has been another growth industry). They demand the right and power to exercise violence at will across the globe on behalf of the national interest. That habitual aggression and expansion leads to catastrophe not only for others but for the United States, as in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, seems to escape their notice—or, given its contribution to deficits, maybe not. And even in this domain protecting the national interest means guaranteeing the right of individuals to live lives of consumptive ease and abundance, assuming they can “earn” it, of course. Why do they hate America?

What, then, is America to Republicans? It’s a non-place where unencumbered individual (including corporate) interest reigns supreme, which requires for them the minimization, if not elimination, of government. This is not to suggest that a country should be equated with its government. It is to suggest that when Republicans express distaste for public life and institutions (including government), for collective aspirations and achievements, for service to the common good and a sense of social and civic solidarity, especially with those less blessed than they, they evince hatred of America.

News Corporation and American Democracy

2011-07-31T17:13:00.000-07:00

Will Rupert Murdoch's public humiliation end with the indictment of his son and deposing both as leaders of News Corporation? Murdoch is of course a larger than life figure, a modern day Citizen Kane, the movie character based in part on the life of the real media titan of his day, William Randolph Hearst. Hearst built a media empire through yellow journalism and relentless promotion of American empire. Murdoch has helped reshape modern media, not merely in terms of corporate consolidation or political leanings but also journalistic style and redefinition of the nature and limits of political argument. But though he has helped to define the role of media tycoon in the late twentieth and twenty first century, the evolution of capitalism and its political economy has itself reinforced and in turn been buttressed by his performance. Great actors inspire but also depend on engaged and receptive audiences.

Rupert Murdoch did not begin the process of media consolidation. A generation ago, media scholar and critic Ben Bagdikian highlighted the tendency of corporate media empires to achieve a high degree of both vertical and horizontal integration. (See his book, New Media Monopoly.) Diminishing numbers of corporate media controlled most of the market. In Britain, Murdoch has achieved an unprecedented degree of media consolidation.

That success of course owes something to Murdoch's ability to appeal to--and sow--the politics of backlash and jingoism. Murdoch had a cultural climate that proved receptive. The mainstream media of the sixties and seventies did indeed show some sympathy to growing concerns over racial justice and social issues. Radical critiques of corporate capitalism or sympathetic analyses of the plight of working class whites in an era of outsourcing, however, were hardly to be found. Murdoch had a perfect sweet spot to spread his right wing populism.

Murdoch's success has had other drivers as well. Like the large investment banks and defense contractors, he has depended on a symbiotic relationship with major political leaders. John Nichols points out: "Rupert Murdoch has manipulated not just the news but the news landscape of the United States for decades. He has done so by pressuring the Federal Communications Commission and Congress to alter the laws of the land and regulatory standards in order to give his media conglomerate an unfair advantage in 'competition' with more locally focused, more engaged and more responsible media. It's an old story: while Murdoch's Fox News hosts prattle on and on about their enthusiasm for the free market, they work for a firm that seeks to game the system so Murdoch's 'properties' are best positioned to monopolize the discourse." Murdoch is a prime example of the evolution of US capitalism toward a political economy that imposes market discipline on the poor even as it rewards and buttresses the power of the corporate winners and the wealthy.

Source: the Media Reform Information Center.

Nichols also asks if we should care about Murdoch's journalistic triumph. He suggests that the Murdoch scandal "raises huge questions about how news stories are and will be obtained in an era of new media and about the extent to which supposedly personal communications are private." These are certainly valid points, but a ruthless pursuit and exploitation of information about the private lives of its subjects has early precursors within the national security state itself. Think of J Edgar Hoover's accumulation of information about the sexual predilections of political leaders and his shameless deployment of these to bribe his nominal superiors.

Just as importantly, the corporate culture of News Corp reflected Murdoch's broader political ideals and affected its journalistic practices. Murdoch's notorious hostility to unions expressed itself in actions taken after high profile news takeovers at such papers as the New York Post and this in turn affected the editorial product. Michelle Chen comments: "Eavesdropping on voicemail or obtaining call logs was initially a money-saving measure" to get the scoop fast and cheap. That is, pressure to maximize profits contributed directly to the corruption of reporting practices." Reporters were subject to the same sort of speed up that shaped manufacturing assembly lines and still today is, as Harold Meyerson points out, a major driver of corporate profits even in the midst of the great recession.

More broadly, Murdoch feeds but also reflects a politics of demonization not unique to the United States but exceptionally potent here. Thus to a greater extent than in most modern democracies, such questions as whether one inhaled marijuana or had a mistress pass for informed and important political debate.

Fox reflects and amplifies another vital trend in the evolution of our politics. Naomi Klein's provocative Shock Doctrine suggests that the evolution of neoliberal capitalism with its market discipline for the many and rewards and subsidies for the well placed has depended on crisis. Thus 9/11 gave Bush extraordinary opportunities to reshape the economy and the national security state. Yet from my vantage point Klein underplays the role of the media in framing and fostering the sense of crisis. How is it that 9/11 evoked a far different response from the Oklahoma City bombing? A media that glorified Wall Street as the world's financial capital, that demonized Arabs, that viewed human history in Manichean terms played a crucial role.

The role of the media in shaping and defining crisis is even more obvious in the case of the current debt ceiling debate. The notion that the US is broke is absurd. If we are broke now, we were much more broke in the years following WWII. Yet in those years the US growth rate topped that of the Reagan era and the fruits of growth were much more equitably distributed. Nonetheless, Fox has been an amplification machine for the notion that the US is broke and government, just like today's families, must retrench. This analysis is only half right. Middle and working class families are broke, but the Federal Government can borrow money at historically low rates. If it does not borrow--or tax corporate and wealthy savings---and spend, we may be sunk.

Murdoch and his minions may face criminal charges. His singular ability to sense cultural vulnerabilities and ruthlessly to unearth and exploit personal failings or eccentricities has altered the media and political world. But neither our media nor our progressive politicians should indulge in anti-Murdoch vendettas and frame him as symbol and root of our troubles. True, he is an ideal villain and we love villains. But absent much stronger barriers to media consolidation and more opportunities for a diverse, citizen-journalist- and- consumer- directed media, where something other than advertiser dollars are the prime driver and motivation. Murdoch's demise will do us little good. Perhaps the role of the few remaining independent voices like the Guardian in exposing Murdoch and the truly ghastly practices to which News Corporation has stooped will help foster broad media and economic reform. (See http://www.democracynow.org/2011/7/21/murdoch_empire_pummelled_by_phone_hacking).

If progressives' only success is to punish or remove Rupert Murdoch, we may be disappointed. The larger political economy he represents may survive and even grow with his fall. Gwynne Dwyer points out: "There is something called the "Murdoch discount." It is the gap between the market value of News Corporation as it is, and the considerably larger sum that it would be worth without Rupert Murdoch at the helm. (Bloomberg estimates that it would be 50 percent higher.)" But what is good for News Corporation stockholders may not be good enough for us.

Horseshoe Curve

2011-07-24T08:24:00.000-07:00

Thomas Dumm

Amherst College

I have just returned from a visit to Altoona, Pennsylvania, in order to see my father. While there I took a friend to see the world famous Horseshoe Curve. Many people who know my sense of humor think I am being ironical when I refer to it that way, but those who are railroad buffs know better. When it first opened, the Curve was acclaimed as one of the eight wonders of the modern world, along with such sights as the Eiffel Tower and London’s Crystal Palace. But few know of it now, and therein is a sad story.

The Horseshoe Curve came into existence in 1854, as the solution to a seemingly unsolvable engineering problem – how to build a railroad that could cross the high point of the Allegheny Mountains in order to connect Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. There was an urgent need to solving the problem. New York especially was becoming the major trade route between east and west, due to the success of the Erie Canal.

At the time, the most efficient route between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia was the Portage Canal and Rail, a combination of boat – through the Susquehanna and Juniata Rivers to the town of Hollidaysburg, where the boats would be hoisted onto cars, which then would be pulled by rope up a series of steep inclined planes to the top of the mountain ridge. A trip between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh took six to seven days, when the weather was favorable. And the transport of freight was just about out of the equation all together, due to the expense.

To address this problem, in 1846 the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania chartered the Pennsylvania Railroad and hired the engineers John Edgar Thomson and Herman Haupt to take charge of its construction. They decided that the most efficient route through the mountains was to follow old Indian trails along the ridges of the mountains, straight through the center of the state. This route was perfect, except for one barrier – Kittanning Gap, a spot that interrupted the path between two major ridges. To build a bridge of over two thousand feet to connect the ridges would have been impossible at the time, mainly because the degree of incline would have been close to 3%, much too steep for a locomotive to manage.

So what did they do? They imported about 400 Irish laborers, who, with only black powder, picks, chisels and wheelbarrows, created a landfill. The landfill contained more cubic footage than all of the Great Pyramids of Egypt combined, and created a ridge where there had been a valley. Around that ridge the railroad was laid, in the shape of horseshoe, at an incline of about 1.3%. The time of travel between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh was cut to less than a day, and freight was able to make it through the mountains. The Pennsylvania Railroad became, for a time, the largest railroad, by almost every measure – 10,000 miles of track, three times the freight and revenue of its closest competitors – through the first half of the 20th century, and at one point was the world’s largest publically traded corporation. Indeed, for some years its revenue stream was larger than that of the U.S. government, and it still holds the record for continuous dividend payments to its shareholders, over a 100 years. At its peak, the PRR employed over 250,000 workers.

The Horseshoe Curve was such a critical national link in the transportation system that Nazi Germany targeted it for sabotage during World War II. But what the Nazis couldn’t destroy, GM and Dwight Eisenhower could. The establishment of the Interstate Highway System in 1956, pushed by Eisenhower, established a national Highway Trust Fund to build and maintain what is now the dominant form of transport in the country. Railroads immediately went into decline, though the PRR continued to be profitable, until forced by the Interstate Commerce Commission, as part of its 1968 merger with the ailing New York Central Railroad, to take on several other highly unprofitable lines. Two years later, after the U.S. government, led by Eisenhower’s former vice-president, and strapped for money because the Vietnam War, reneged on a $200 million loan guarantee, and the newly named Penn Central Railroad went bankrupt. The pieces went to first to Conrail, a court created successor to the Penn Central, and then to Northern Southern Railway, and CSX, none of which carry passengers.

I drove on the Interstate to visit Dad, and on the return trip to Amherst our car was hit by a truck. The car was totaled. Lucky for me, the airbags deployed. But I had plenty of time while waiting at the car rental in Wappinger Falls, New York, and then on the remainder of the long trip, to think about what it would have meant to have a good rail system in place. Instead of the grinding drive, a relaxing journey. Instead of the crazy drivers, wasted fuel, and butt ugly scenery, perhaps a glass of wine, a meal, and time to read. Instead of wreckage on the highway . . . well, you get the point.

One of the most interesting aspects of this story, it seems to me, is the overt and clear participation of government in the building and maintenance of transportation systems. The assumption, even for the building of the Interstate Highway, that there is a necessary role for the state to play in such huge projects that have such serious impact on the lives of the citizenry, is a shibboleth to the ideologues now in charge of Congress. John Mica (R) from Florida, currently chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has called for drastic cuts in the next round of Highway Trust Fund spending, ignoring the fact that those funds are supposed to be dedicated to transportation projects.

Compounding the misery of our trip on the highway, on our drive home we listened to Mica pontificating on C-SPAN radio, explaining how Amtrak is an abject failure and waste of money, how we can be much more efficient if we would privatize highways, with no evidence, but with a lot of conviction in his voice. When listeners called in suggesting that perhaps running two wars was even more inefficient, he blithely ignored them. Later, we heard how we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, one that would require, when passed, 2/3 majorities in each house of Congress to pass tax increases. And so it goes.

Looking Beyond Spring for the Season: An African Perspective on the World Order after the Arab Revolt

2011-07-14T20:06:00.001-07:00

Siba Grovogui

Johns Hopkins University

There is much misunderstanding today about the decision of African Union (AU) to not endorse the military intervention in Libya undertaken by France, Great Britain, and the United States in conjunction with a few Arab States. Speculations abound as to whether the uniform decision coming out of Africa indicates that the African Union is out of step with the spirit of freedom sweeping across North Africa and the Arab World, or whether the absence of Africa in the battlefield of Libya suggests military ineptitude and political bankruptcy. In fact, the African Union has not been indifferent to the conflict in Libya. The AU opted for mediation and negotiated constitutional compact, with the aim of fostering a different kind of politics. The uniform refusal of the AU to endorse Western intervention has two main explanations. The first is the practice of consensus in decision-making which has a long history within Africa. The other is profound unease on the continent about the form and foundation of the intervention itself.

I suggest that there is continent-wide skepticism in Africa about Western leadership in the eras of global governance, the rule of (international) law, the status of international morality, and the future of global democracy. This development is the result of continental experiences with the modes of enactment and execution interventions in Africa. The African position arises therefore from doubt that the coalition of Western powers leading the military effort in Libya today can be trusted to not abuse legitimate anti-Gaddafi sentiments, to not instrumentalize international law and morality, and to not subvert UN procedures and the mechanisms of global governance in order to advance hegemonic agendas and parochial ‘strategic’ interests. In short, underlying the African objection to military intervention is a longstanding tension between international organizations that represent Africa and the self-identified West around the representations of the will of the international community, the resulting global democratic deficit in times of intervention, and their effects on international morality, including the principles of humanitarianism.

In relating this conflict, I do not speak for a uniformly-defined ‘Africa’ and/or for all African entities. Nor do I wish to conflate the official West with the sentiments and traditions of all constituencies of what might be called The West. I reflect on a widely held sentiment currently expressed in Africa that specific actions by Western powers with respect to Libya paradoxically undermine the spirit and practice of participative global governance. They also subvert what should have been a moment of transformation of politics at the local, national, and global levels. In short, this is a story of how the global democratic gap or what I call the global democratic deficit has widened precisely at the moment when the national democratic deficit has erupted into violent conflict. The paradox is that humanitarian concerns come once again to serve as pretext for widening the global democratic deficit and, in the case of the Middle East, re-inscribing the term of past imperial relations under new guises.

Today’s democratic deficit may be located in many registers, two of which are of interest here: the national and the international. The domestic democratic deficit is what has prompted street uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The global democratic deficit resides in the structures of international organizations where states, regional organizations, and other entities necessarily occupy different positions commensurate with their powers, endowments, traditions and the like. However, structures do not necessarily produce deficit, they create the conditions for it. In the present case, one can trace the deficit to the processes of decision-making regarding Libya and the institutions and traditions to which they may be traced.

(Source: http://subashini.tumblr.com/post/6490630348/hidingincanada-spatiotemporalcookies)

Few are aware for instance that the Western coalition on Libya decided to declare Libya Arab and not African and thus designated the League of Arab States as the primary address ‘in matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security in the region’ encompassing that country. The purpose it has become apparent was to remove any hindrance to an agenda that did not conform to UN mandates. The UN resolution currently implemented (Res. 1973) (PDF) has a number of stipulations that can be summarized thus: 1) ‘immediate establishment of a cease-fire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians’; 2) ‘the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people,’ aided by a Special Envoy to Libya and the Peace and Security Council of the African Union; 3) compliance by ‘Libyan authorities comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights and refugee law’; 4) ‘to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, including Benghazi, while excluding a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory.’

The AU understood the point of the resolution to favor a peaceful resolution but it has become apparent today the coalition had a different agenda from that stipulated in it. It has also become apparent that, on account of its position in the relevant international organizations and political and military endowments, the Western coalition was reverting to the imperial tradition of claiming the universal will for itself – and thus to exclude others from its expression. Having sidelined Africans and imputed all hindrances to the resolution of the conflict to Gaddafi, the Western coalition determined to change the regime in Tripoli which one issued from the ranks of the opposition in Benghazi: the Transitional National Council, or TNC. Since then, all measures recommended by Res.1973 have been exceeded. Specifically, NATO airstrikes have gone from forestalling Gaddafi’s aggression to destroying the nation’s infrastructure. In the process, the Western alliance has embraced assassination as a policy; Britain has sent special agents to the ground; and France had delivered weapons to the so-called resistance, despite the putative ban on weapons. The irony, as Gaddafi is finding out, is that to defy Western will is to expose one to a fate not unlike Gaddafi’s answers to those who rebelled against him.

Like the domestic democratic deficit against which Libyans rightly rose up, the global democratic deficit is both behavioral and structural. The connection between the non-democratic behavior of global hegemonic powers and the possibility of democratic politics at the domestic level is often direct. Take for instance the role of the West in the political culture currently brewing in the Libyan opposition. Since endorsing the TNC as the sole legitimate representative of the Libyan people, the Western coalition backing has remained silent as the organization grows intolerant by the day not only toward Gaddafi, his family, and allies but also toward Sub-Saharan African migrants accused of sympathy with the regime. Accordingly, the TNC has not only excluded negotiation with Gaddafi or his allies; it has snubbed all efforts by the African Union to mediate a political settlement. To either the West or the TNC, there could be only one solution: total and unconditional surrender of political opponents.

Africans are accustomed to a certain instrumentalization of reform by Western powers. One recalls for instance the policy of Constructive Engagement. During the Apartheid years, this official US policy was build on the assumption that effective politically mediation and settlement in South Africa rested in the capacity of mediators (honest brokers?) like the US to engage all parties even, in this case, a regime that was ideologically and politically bent on the total subordination of its local black population and the destruction of neighboring states. Africans are also accustomed to another certainty in Western interventions: this is that unsympathetic entities like the then Marxist regimes of Angola and Mozambique and the African National Congress of South Africa were directed by Western powers to necessarily accommodate opposing Western-friendly entities, whether states, corporations, or political organizations as a requirement for lasting peace. By contrast, it is also a certainty of political life in Africa that, upon Western interventions, reigning or ascendant Western-friendly entities need not accommodate unsympathetic opposing figures or entities. In other words, friends of the West need not bother with democratic niceties as the price for peace. Enemies or adversaries do the same or they are eliminated from the scene.

In the case of Libya one may even wonder why the TNC would want to negotiate, compromise, or reconcile when the largest armies in the world are committed to the destruction of the one obstacle to their own path to power? President Ahmadou Toumani Touré of Mali, an engaged democrat himself whose own behavior in power contrasts drastically with that of Gaddafi, gave an indication of his own sentiment about the situation in an interview granted to Radio France Internationale. Asked by the reporter why he would not join the West (again dubbed during the interview as the International Community), Touré gave the following answer, which I paraphrase: ‘We are asked to promote democracy in Libya against a man who holds power at the barrel of the gun and you want me to unseat him at the barrel of the gun and seat another group in his place. If Gaddafi’s unwillingness to negotiate and compromise is the problem today why is the other side relying on forced removal?’

Ahmadou Toumani Touré

The current intransigence of the West and the TNC has unnerved Africans because it reveals a culture of intolerance. A quick survey of the response of the West to the Arab Spring thus far tells a mixed story. There was no protest when, upon the departure of Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali, the old regimes essentially maintained themselves. Western reactions to Bahrain, Yemen, and Syria contrast starkly with reactions to Libya. Here, the coalition has fomented and condoned intransigence on the part of the rebels against negotiated settlement. Significantly, with NATO support, the TNC is now on its way to Tripoli without any warnings from the coalition on the fate of civilians in that city if the rebels succeeded in overtaking it: the stated motivation of attacks on Gaddafi’s army.

I know of few people who would argue that the situation in Libya was tenable or that it should have been allowed to persist. I also know of few individuals who would pretend that an operation such as the one currently undertaken by the West could be carried out without mistakes or blemish. Yet, these are not arguments against global democracy and the reasonableness that is required in interpreting international law, particularly UN Resolutions. To paraphrase a dissenting opinion by Judge Kotaro Tanaka (PDF) of the International Court of Justice, ‘different treatment under international law should be permitted only when it can be justified by the criterion of justice’; thus, one may replace justice with reasonableness but only that criterion does not logically lead to arbitrariness. In short, even a doctrine of reasonableness required by pragmatism should not be allowed to do away with the questions of democracy and the morality implied in different treatment of similarly situated events and persons.

The idea that one can be excluded from the political compact simply because of one’s position in the global system or association within an undemocratic regime is a nightmarish scenario to generations of activists who have fought for human rights, constitutionalism, and democratic inclusion; as well as humanitarians who have tended to the social calamities caused by endless civil wars and leading to the collapse of peace and the failure of state. To those who are undeterred by the idea that Africans may actually formulate coherent views of international morality, including an aversion to war, consider these facts. In 2003, even after dispatching Colin Powell to Africa to seek support for the war in Iraq, the US failed to move a single one of them. This refusal to join the Iraq war effort came at the heel of great sympathy for the US following the 1998 US Embassy Bombings in East Africa and the attack perpetrated against the US on 9/11/2001. Further, for nearly 4 years, the US has failed to find a single state from fifty three to host AFRICOM (the US military Africa Command) even as all African states have endorsed the aims of US anti-terrorism programs. Today, none of the countries, and all of them African enlisted in the US initiated Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership, all of them poor and dependent on US aid, has endorsed military intervention in Libya.

Bridesmaids

2011-07-07T11:47:00.000-07:00

Laurie Frankel
Writer and teacher in Seattle at work on
her second novel.
Laurie Frankel’s first novel, The Atlas of
Love, came out in August 2010.

The summer Bridesmaids came out, Salon ran two articles on it with these headlines: “Bridesmaids: A Triumph for Vomit, and Feminism” and “Seeing Bridesmaids is a Social Responsibility,” the former of which begins with the line, “Meet Bridesmaids, your first black president of female-driven comedies” and ends with the line, “Three cheers for equality.” The New York Times calls its humor “liberating” under the headline, “Deflating That Big, Puffy White Gown.” The LA Times calls it the “rarest of treats: an R-rated romantic comedy from the Venus point of view,” and goes on to introduce “an ensemble of witty twisted sisters who come in all shapes and sizes (both the wit and the sisters, the unrelated kind, just ‘doin' it for themselves’).” Entertainment Weekly writes, “Bridesmaids has a fully rounded, textured, and original script, even if it does offer a funky-lady spin on a number of Apatow tropes” (italics mine).

Every review out there, every one, remarks on this movie as a female-centric film. That deserves some exploration to begin with. It is directed by a man. It is produced by a man. So what all these reviews are noting is that the film is written by women and starring women. The latter, of course, is not unusual -- most movies feature women, even in leading roles. What they’re noting as unusual here is that the women are funny. And what the marketers and promoters of this movie contend is that the very fact of this film -- women being gross and lowbrow and funny and for sale -- is a triumph for women and that seeing it is a feminist act.

It seems important, then, to look at the film critically from a feminist perspective, and I have some complaints. Many of them are, in fact, the usual complaints. Here we learn:

1) Single women are losers. Annie’s life is a disaster. The sex she has with the hottest man in pop culture right now (John Hamm) degrades her because it holds no promise of a relationship (consider how much of a loser we’d label a hapless male lead for having commitment-less sex with the hottest woman going). She has weird, unsuitable roommates and then lives with her mom. Her business fails and closes and then she even loses her mindless backup job. She has no money; her car doesn’t work; she can’t afford to be a real friend (love, of course, being nowhere near enough). But much, much worse than any of that is this central tragedy, presented as such: her best friend gets engaged. Plus, to top it all off, despite the fact that she is reed thin, she makes several comments over the course of the film as to her jealousy that her rival is so much skinnier than she is (she isn’t, best I could tell). Speaking of which, we also learn that...

2) Fat women aren’t really women.

Here we have four Hollywood-thin bridesmaids who each embody a female caricature (single loser, rich wife, naive newlywed, and mom) and one large woman presented so butch that she’s barely female at all. In fact, that she’s heterosexual, worthy of love, and can attract a man is one of the film’s final punchlines. Speaking of attracting a man, we learn that...

3) Weddings = happy ending. Even when they’re disastrous. Even when the love story is so underdeveloped that the groom appears on screen for about a minute. Even when their ruin has been the topic of the previous two hours. This truth extends to show us that unloved, uncoupled heroine = loser whereas equally poor, equally unemployed, equally socially inept heroine at the end but with the promise of a boyfriend also = happy ending. Which brings us to my final usual complaint...

4) Women can’t really be friends for women are too shallow, catty, selfish, self-involved, petty, and jealous.

Is Annie happy for her lifelong friend Lillian when she gets engaged? No, not even for a moment. Can she swallow her annoyance with Lillian’s new friends or her own feelings of inadequacy and jealousy or put aside the challenges in her own life for just a little while while her best friend gets married? She cannot. She’s supposed to be endearing, suffering from slightly exaggerated, comic versions of the flaws we all share. Instead, she’s selfish, self-absorbed, and a really shitty friend. This is especially alarming because usually the friendships are the heart of Judd Apatow movies. The media has labeled them “bro-mances,” and that slightly ridiculous monicker seems in fact appropriate to me because what’s enjoyable about those movies is the pleasure of watching these friendships -- the pack of endearing guys who are crass and gross and just want to get laid but nonetheless have one another’s backs and, though they rarely admit it, really care about each another. They’re the reason why these movies work. The friendships are the sweet parts holding together the grossness and crassness and over-the-top slapstick humor. Bridesmaids has grossness, crassness, and over-the-top slapstick humor but, lacking these friendships, nothing to hold it together. This is a movie about friendship and a wedding which is almost entirely lacking in love. Worse, it reinforces stereotypes that women can’t support each other when weddings, money, men, or other skinny women are involved.

That’s not feminism folks. It’s the opposite.

Meanwhile, here’s complaint #5, the unusual one. This movie is earning praise for women being just as raunchy, gross, and scatological as men. Think only men can make money making movies where they shit and vomit on screen? Think it’s only funny when guys puke on one another’s heads or have diarrhea in a sink? Wrong. Great dawning day for women! Now they too can poop and puke on the big screen. So what we learn is in fact not that women are funny too or that women can be as funny as men but rather, again, the opposite -- that women can only be funny by being as much like men as possible, that women’s humor does not earn them a place on the big screen, that only men’s humor is worthy of that spot. Women are earning condescending praise here -- for not being squeamish, prudish, I-won’t-see-that-kind-of-movie nags. Does that sound like the voices of talented, powerful, groundbreaking artists finally being heard? No, it sounds like farting in a wedding gown.

The Republican Pincer Machine

2011-06-29T20:06:00.000-07:00

William E. Connolly

Johns Hopkins University

The basic situation is clear. Despite campaigning during a period when the opposing Party was saddled with an unfunded, irrational war and soaring inequality, Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign did not climb over the hump until a week after the September 15th meltdown. At that point McCain faltered, and many voters took another look around. Obama was cool and competent during this crisis. And the consummate campaigner soon became the front runner, if not by the margin you would expect under such dire circumstances.

Coming into office, Obama faced a huge debt assembled over the Bush years, amplified by the bail outs of banks. Unemployment soared and the economy was frozen. He concluded that it was necessary to stimulate the economy in the Keynesian tradition. Homeowners, consumers, banks and corporations were no longer active, so the government had to provide a stimulus of last resort.

Left Keynesians, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, insisted from the start that the Obama stimulus was neither big enough nor focused properly. It contained too many tax cuts for upper income people and insufficient job creation through projects to rebuild the economic infrastructure: fast rail, new electrical conveyor systems, green energy projects, highway construction, urban housing, and school construction. Obama argued that his modest program was needed to avoid a Republican filibuster. Many others thought--I was among this group--that this was precisely the time to incite such a filibuster from the radical right. If Republicans enacted one at this stage they could be seen, accurately, as an obstacle to recovery from the meltdown they had created; if they caved, the economy would be stimulated along tracks that were favorable to the future of everyday people and America in the world.

This is when the Republican Party set its trap. Meeting in closed sessions at the beginning of the Obama regime, the party of tax cuts for the rich, unfunded wars, and the largest deficit in the history of the country redefined itself. It suddenly became the party of deficit reduction through lean government joined to supreme confidence in unregulated financial and corporate markets. It even opposed the bail out of General Motors and Chrysler, though these actions stopped unemployment from reaching a dangerous tipping point, allowed the two companies time to reconstruct themselves, and enabled them to pay back the loans within two years–-creating one of the most successful bailouts in the history of Euro-American economic life.

Now the pincers machine was in full motion. The first pincer was systematic refusal to support programs that would pull the economy out of the dangerous recession within a year or two. That refusal would create failure for which the President and Keynesianism could be blamed. The second, one that surprised many with its quick success, was to redefine the issues until the problem with the economy became the stimulus itself rather than too small a stimulus.

Obama aided both strategies by presenting his small, unbalanced stimulus as sufficient to the task. But, still, the Republicans had to construct a deft strategy. They had to convince a large section of the electorate that the party of profligate military spending, economic meltdown, and tax cuts for the rich when in power was actually, now that it was out of power, the guardian of a self-sustaining market economy that only needed the state to get out of the way. This vision was attached to a simple idea of entrepreneurial, consumer and worker freedom in an unfettered market economy, a vision that deflects attention from the draconian disciplines they are actually willing to impose on regular people in the name of a small state. If you want a sense of what the latter measures are check out the policies of recently elected Republican governors and legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio. If you need more check out the repressive worker policies of Walmart, recently vindicated by the gang of five Republicans on the Supreme Court.

So the trap sucked Obama into a small stimulus in an attempt to gain Republican support; then Republicans voted against it; then they treated the stimulus as THE source of the problem; then they insisted that a return to unregulated markets and tax reductions for the rich would cure all evils. Why did such a strategy work as well as it has?

The answer is that some sections of the populace were already primed to accept such a simple conception of freedom and vision of market self-sufficiency, even if acceptance required it to forget how the Bush regime of unfunded wars, low taxes, and deregulation had created the crisis and even if it was often against their economic interest to support such a story line. But, again, why accept such fantasies so quickly?

The reasons vary from constituency to constituency. First, many young people of relative affluence were pushed in this direction by the pressure to believe in the stability of the system in which they seek to forge professional and entrepreneural careers. Second, there is a distinctive sense of special entitlement among the rich and super-rich in America, a sense that encourages them to support the myth of a self-sustaining market economy whose main problem is large state expenditures and regulation of banks, derivatives, Wall Street and corporations. Call it American exceptionalism. Moreover, their wariness of “entitlement programs”–-those self funded programs of Social Security and medicare upon which so many Americans depend---provide ideological cover for the more fundamental sense of class entitlement they feel. They feel entitled to a corporate economy that allows them to wrangle an ever increasing share of the income and wealth from it, even while other classes tread water, or worse.

That covers two constituencies. But what about others? I have contended in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style that many anxious white males in the working and middle classes seek alpha models of masculinity with which to identify in a world of declining manufacturing jobs, perceived pressure from multiple minorities, and growing economic uncertainty. Given such a preliminary disposition, many are drawn to corporate elites, sports heroes, financial wizards and military leaders who project alpha images of freedom as independence, mastery and virility. That sense of freedom can then be nudged toward idealizing unregulated markets within which virile masters work their miracles.

On the other hand state welfare programs, market regulations, state retirement schemes, and state protected health care, while essential to life, remind too many of the very fragilities, vulnerabilities, susceptibilities and dependencies they strive to forget. So they are tempted by the idea of freedom as mastery. Many, certainly, resist succumbing to such pressures, out of concern for their children and the future. But others succumb, simplifying the experience of freedom until it is dissociated from the quality of work life, social interdependency, collective action, union organization, local associational life, and the like.

So the Right becomes the bearer of “freedom”, while the Left becomes the bearer of “welfare” disconnected from it. A dangerous combination.

There is a double bind at work here. First, masculinization of the market and feminization of state welfare draws many in the white working class toward the myth of unregulated markets. Second, attempts to draw attention to how the first bind works intensifies resentment among these very constituencies against the Democratic Party, the welfare state, and state regulation. The account seems to challenge the image of freedom they express. Obama found that out in 2008 when, in a fundraising speech leaked to the media, he noted the resentment felt by many members of the white working class. To point to the bind and the pressures to stifle enunciation of it is to risk deepening the bind. That is the second bind in the double bind.

The political formula of the radical right is thus effective while dangerous to the country. On the other hand, to ignore the double bind is to forget the suffering of the working class, to court the loss of an urgently needed constituency, and to risk allowing the rightward drive of the country to continue.

Neoliberal heroes, Fox Talking Heads, and evangelical publicists help to incite the vulnerabilities in question; they then feed upon the struggle of many white males to conceal them from their families. This pincers movement helps to explain the Tea Party, which, by the way, is not “new” but merely the latest incarnation of an “evangelical-capitalist resonance machine” that has helped to define the public philosophy of America since 1980. Clinton and Obama swim in these waters, even if they sometimes make faint efforts to climb out of them.

Yes, the Republican pincers movement works in part because a Fox News/think tank/ publicist machine reiterates its assumptions every day. But it also works because many anxious male members of the white middle and working classes are predisposed to its message.

The probability, then, is that the next election will be close. It could also be fateful. Not because it is apt to enable the kind of electoral transformation the country urgently needs. But the Republican Party already has a majority on the Supreme Court, which increasingly attacks the rights of workers and consumers. If it captures the White House and both houses of Congress it will pass Draconian measures and deploy repressive tactics to stifle public dissent. All in the name of freedom. What to do?

Of course new and surprising events could shuffle things again, as they have at times in the past. The politics of the event does periodically erupt. But it is not wise to count in advance on those events breaking the best way. To me, the first thing to do is to explain in sympathetic ways what kind of pressures the white working class faces today, without caving in to tendencies within a segment of this class to demonize minorities.

The second is to remind people forcefully how many times tax cuts for the rich and market deregulation have generated economic crises, starting with the Great Depression.

The third, and most fundamental, is to challenge head on Republican definitions of freedom through anti-labor and anti-consumer policies of the state joined to a vision of market self-sufficiency, elaborating a richer story of how freedom works and how deregulated markets demean it.

The fourth, which can only work if the third is under way, is to propose an ambitious jobs program that, if passed, would simultaneously rebuild the infrastructure to meet the needs of the twenty-first century, provide meaningful jobs for high school graduates, stimulate the economy, and promote real freedom for families, workers and consumers.

The fifth is to insist, against the grain of the Republican story, that tax increases for the rich and a regulated economy are desperately needed to avoid a new version of the most recent meltdown.

To me, the third element provides the lynch pin.

Such a counter formula is insufficient to our troubled time. But it may provide a needed start. It might create sufficient momentum to attract a larger minority of white working class voters to join a vibrant assemblage of the young, gays, Hispanics, African Americans, many women and a growing constellation of Jews, Muslims and Christians who are ashamed of the way their faiths have been represented by the religious right.

Two, No, Make that One Cheer for Golf

2011-06-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Steven Johnston

University of South Florida

Patriotism is always on the lookout for new sources of support. Consider the United States in the late twentieth century. From the Vietnam War to the space shuttle Challenger, there’s no war patriotism can’t adopt or rehabilitate, no traumatic event it can’t use and convert into a heroic narrative or mawkish monument or memorial. This creativity is its genius. Don’t underestimate it. It’s even gotten its affective hooks into the otherwise staid game of golf. No resistance has been offered; if anything, golf has welcomed this usurpation.

On Father’s Day the United States Golf Association conducted the 111th version of the United States Open. NBC opened its Sunday coverage with some patriotic hoopla: children reciting the pledge of allegiance. Thanks to NBC’s editing, both “under God” and “indivisible” were cut. The reaction on social media was fast and furious and NBC prostrated itself on air. “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago, and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone, and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.”

Apparently someone forgot to inform NBC of its broadcast location: Bethesda, Maryland. The Washington D.C. border and the nation’s capital are several miles away. More importantly, what does patriotism have to do with an individual pursuit like golf, even when it’s the United States Open? The eventual winner, Rory McIlroy, treated victory as the individual accomplishment it represents, pleased to be in the company of other great athletes and previous winners such as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Arnold Palmer, and Ben Hogan. It was all about “history and prestige” in the sport. McIlroy hails from Northern Ireland, but the national flag someone offered him shortly after he won did not interest him and he declined to wrap it around himself as he walked off the course.

NBC’s U.S. Open effort to affix patriotism to golf followed its coverage of last year’s Ryder Cup, a golf competition between teams from the United States and Europe. Despite boasting the best professionals and the most competitive weekly tour, the United States has won only four of the last thirteen competitions. This generates great biannual concern in golfing and sporting circles in the United States. The game may not have been invented here, but the United States has made golf its own sporting property.

The huge popularity of the Ryder Cup (one of the world’s most watched athletic events) represents not just a remarkable sporting and media reversal but a downright triumph. Starting in the mid-nineteen twenties, the United Sates and Great Britain staged the biannual competition for fifty years and no one really noticed. The United States won each contest, usually handily, save one, 1969, which was deemed an aberration, even an act of charity. For the 1979 competition, Europe replaced Great Britain and by 1983 golf had a genuinely competitive international sporting spectacle, with political passion and hard feelings to match.

Triggered by competition, more specifically, a potent foreign enemy bent on acquiring global dominance, the Ryder Cup became a patriotic phenomenon. Professional in the United States rose to meet the threat. Players now covet a spot on the team. Despite the rivalries on the PGA Tour, where players such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, Ryder Cup stalwarts, openly disdain one another, American players express solidarity: they dress alike, practice together, socialize, and talk endlessly about the incomparable thrill of playing for their country, which, of course, they love. They never knew playing in the Ryder Cup could elicit such feeling. Remarkably, they are nothing if not sincere. Team uniforms (yes, golf uniforms) often involve red, white, and blue. Fans wave American flags en masse (at least when the event is held in the United States). Chants of USA! USA! USA! Or Europe! Europe! accompany victory. European patriotism may be in its infancy, but defeating a hated enemy, however artificially produced, resonates.

This is the stunning achievement of the Ryder Cup, for golf is an inherently individual pursuit. That is its attraction. It may be thought the sport of aristocrats, but it is played by many tens of millions of people around the world and its distance from the chauvinism of the Olympic Games, the World Cup, and other exercises in controlled national aggression recommend it. Golf was and is wonderfully isolating, even narcissistic, an exercise in self-overcoming. If you hate groups, this is the sport for you. Unlike team sports, your eventual success does not depend on teammates who may not be nearly as skilled as are you. It’s even anti-humanist. It’s you against a golf course.

The Ryder Cup makes professional golfers forget that they are, well, professional golfers, that is, selfish, pampered, overpaid, entitled, capitalist practitioners of a silly but fascinating game. Golf has no wider significance and this is its beauty. No more, perhaps, thanks to the Ryder Cup. Think of it as the pod-like power of patriotism. Golf still has a long way to go before it attains the cult status of football (what Americans call soccer). For one thing, golf measures success individually, by tournaments won (especially on the American tour), major championships in particular. Tiger Woods is chasing what was once thought to be (cliché alert) an unbreakable record: Jack Nicklaus’s total of eighteen major championships (a combination of the Masters, the United States Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship). This has been Woods’s goal since he was a small child, shorter than a golf club in fact. He may or may not surpass Nicklaus, but at the end of his career, talk will center on how many tournaments and how many majors he won. His Ryder Cup record will be irrelevant. The same is true for Nicklaus. No one knows his Ryder Cup record. What’s more, no one cares—not yet anyway. Golf is simply not a team sport let alone a national team sport, despite the existence of organized competition in high school and college. A few may know that Tiger Woods won the NCAA individual men’s championship in 1996, but no one knows (or cares) how Stanford, his alma mater, fared. Golf, moreover, is rightly known for its sportsmanship and integrity. Players do not root against one another and they self-report rules violations that no one else could possibly detect. This can cost them both victories and huge sums of money, but self-policing is part and parcel of the game.

The contrast with football is dramatic. Football players will do anything to win, whether it’s within the rules or not. The most recent World Cup demonstrated this, much to the outrage and national heartbreak of Ireland and Ghana. The rules of football encourage cheating. What do you have to lose, after all, if you can score or stop a game-winning goal by deflecting it with your hands? You give your team a chance to keep playing and become a national hero for ingenuity. You are a patriot. Just ask Thierry Henry of France and Luis Suarez of Uruguay. Football fans, likewise, are apparently capable of anything should their team not win. Andrés Escobar of Colombia was murdered after his own goal resulted in Colombia’s elimination from the 1994 World Cup.

Can golf survive the Ryder Cup’s appropriation? Will a sport defined by agonism become informed by antagonism? The signs are troubling. In the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, the United States won a close match thanks in part to poor sportsmanship otherwise unheard of in golf. Justin Leonard sealed, ultimately, the Cup for the United States by sinking a long putt on the 17th hole of his match with José Maria Olazábal, after which players, their wives, and fans rushed the putting green and staged a wild celebration. The only problem is that the celebration depended on, even presumed, Olazábal missing his putt, not yet attempted and rendered virtually impossible following the disruptive celebration. You’d think they had just won a war. Imagine people storming an Olympic basketball court before a player had to make a free throw to tie the championship game with one second remaining and you get something of the point.

The United States, Europe, and much of the world may be facing grave economic and political threats, but let’s not abandon golf to the flag-waving know-nothings without a fight. We should respect what it represents: a generalized disdain for everything but its own self-obsessive excellence and the drive to turn our backs on life, in the name of fun and torment, for a little while. Pace Mark Twain, do not let patriotism spoil the joy of a good walk. It’s done enough already.

The Fire Next Time?

2011-06-21T23:02:00.001-07:00

John Buell
John Buell (jbuell@acadia.net) is a columnist for The Progressive Populist and a faculty adjunct at Cochise College. His most recent book, Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age, will be published by Palgrave/Macmillan in August.

As the financial crisis deepened in 2008, the world's economic gurus were caught off guard. Political leaders, academics, and the mainstream media had converged on a new consensus. The era of volatility in financial markets had ended. Free markets, sophisticated technologies, and computer models had given us a new world. Risk could be modeled and quantified and banks, always eager to pursue their own financial interests, could be counted on to continually refine risk models and converge on prices that would reflect real underlying value.

When Lehman Brothers failed, setting off the cascade of bankruptcies that brought the banking system to its knees, Alan Greenspan blamed a once in a hundred years storm. Though on one level Greenspan's remark seemed to be an admission of a major flaw in conventional wisdom, it is better seen as the claim that, however dire current events were, political leaders should not draw long- term policy conclusions from the crash. Recent events also suggest that policy elites prefer to return to business as usual and, more surprisingly, that they are going to get away with it a mere two years after the near collapse of the system.

It has become almost an article of faith, not only in the US but in most of the other G-20 nations, that fiscal profligacy caused the Great Recession, that the stimulus did not work, and that austerity is the only way to restore growth. Mark Blyth, professor of international political economy at Brown University, points to the irony in this state of affairs" "Investment houses that two years ago demanded costly bailouts from government now criticize those same governments for excessive debt." Yet as Blyth, as well as Paul Krugman, Mark Weisbrot, and Dean Baker, point out, many of the governments now blamed for fiscal excess (Greece being the exception) were in sound shape before the crisis. The collapse of the speculative bubble in housing took down highly leveraged banking systems. Government revenues declined and government expenditures for both bailouts and for automatic stabilizers like unemployment compensation rose. As for the failure of the stimulus package, Blyth reminds us that several Eastern European nations failed to adopt stimulus packages and have seen their economies endure extraordinary hardships. Latvian GDP fell 17% in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Austerity proponents base their case on several related notions. Austerity leaves business with less concern about future tax increases and thus willing to invest more. Government spending will no longer crowd out private investment. By historic standards, however, interest rates are already low. In addition, Baker points out that if business feared future tax increases, they would jump to invest and earn money now while taxes are low. Many major corporations are sitting on large piles of cash. They are reluctant to invest not because of fear of government policy but because demand is absent.

Despite sluggish domestic demand, US based multinational corporations have done well. They continually squeeze more productivity out of a diminished workforce and move operations to foreign markets that continue to expand. Nonetheless, there is a physical limit to what management can get out of workers, and inflation has become an increasing concern in the so- called emerging markets. International capitalism's business model may be fundamentally flawed.

The most likely scenario for the US economy is slow growth and persistently high unemployment. Nonetheless, one cannot rule out a more dire double dip. Such a scenario might be provoked if the major G-20 nations do manage substantial simultaneous reductions in government budgets and or if default by a core EU nation like Spain triggers a run on the Euro, thereby putting pressure on holders of its bonds. The breakup of the European Union, a concern of even such mainstream commentators as Nouriel Roubini and Martin Wolf, would have complex and especially hard to predict legal, political, and economic consequences.

Furthermore, as Blyth points out, the major economic powers have learned all too little from 2008. They continue to treat finance as a realm where risks can be modeled and quantified. Government at most only need to demand that derivatives be traded on open markets and to develop its own risk models to assess any possible future problems.

Financial markets, however, do not perform with the orderliness and predictability of billiard balls on a pool table. It is not surprising that the era of financial deregulation has been accompanied by increasingly frequent and ever more severe financial crises. Once in a hundred year storms in the financial markets are now occurring almost as often as the "historic" draughts and floods that have filled our weather casts for several years now. Failure to recognize and acknowledge both phenomena is as much rooted in confidence in linear, predictive models of social and natural science as in economic interests.

Blyth argues that

financial markets are social phenomena... economic performance is as much determined by market participants' beliefs as it is by fundamental indicators... prices can move on momentum whereby disequilibrating price movements compound one another, further driving market prices away from their true worth. Imagine... a case in which a number of creditors believe that a certain state is likely to become insolvent in the next few months. The state's creditors would demand... higher yield for holding the debt...Eventually the pressure from speculators would cause the state to run out of cash thereby creating the very situation that investors feared.but from which they would also profit through the short selling of bonds.

Government risk models might ironically compound such problems. If public authorities and private forecasters converge on a scenario, traders may embark all the more confidently on that path. This is the stuff of which immense bubbles are made. And major investment banks, often using cheap cash from the government, have once again embarked on risky and complex derivative trading. And when the next bubble bursts, governments asked to bail us out will be in far worse shape than last time.

credit: sadguysontradingfloors.tumblr.com

Blyth points out that complex systems need simple rules. Automobile traffic is a complex, nonlinear system, but one simple rule, that everyone drive on the right, prevents 90 percent of possible accidents. Blyth advocates countercyclical capital charges tied to growth in particular asset classes. He also argues that attempts to crush all volatility are futile. Allowing some banks to fail, wiping out stockholders and management while protecting only small depositors, is therapeutic. It exposes defects in the system and prevents larger turmoil. Allowing small forest fires often reduces the likelihood of major events.

Unfortunately neither of these proposals is likely to receive attention. The very sluggishness of the economy gives banks ammunition to argue that "now is not the time" to make it harder for banks to invest and make loans etc. And bank profits have been recycled to buy political leaders. Mainstream media remain in awe of finance capital as they are also increasingly funded by it. Much of the electorate still scapegoats ethnic minorities. Many also extrapolate from their own debt position to the conclusion that more deficit spending by government to stimulate job growth is dangerous. Krugman points out that investment banks and the wealthy in general hold much of their assets in bonds and benefit from deflation or at least low rates of inflation. This may be a dangerous game on their part. If debtors are squeezed to the point of default, how valuable will these bonds be?

In a more long- term sense, Krugman has pointed out that many of today's economists, whom he labels freshwater economists (based at such Midwestern powerhouses as the University of Chicago) have never even read Keynes. They practice a kind of "epistemological closure."

Economic crisis and intellectual and political stagnation are enfolded with each other. Politics, however, is as nonlinear and momentum driven as markets. New hopes, fears, and coalitions may yet help us extricate ourselves from the conventional wisdom that imperils us.