The 6th World

The 6th World Screen grab

Recently over at Ian's Place there's been quite a little hoo-hah over Ian's rather dire warnings about the Our Fate if We don't colonize Space. His presentation is couched in the familiar formulae of Western -- I would say "Anglo" -- colonialism and imperialism, and as is my wont, I take exception to it.

I realize Ian grew up in a colonialist/imperialist household, as he says his father was a minor functionary in the British Raj as India threw off its colonial shackles at the end of the 1940's, when with considerable bloodshed and dislocation, Pakistan divorced from India.

Yes, well. From what I've read Ian say about it, I get the impression he -- or his father -- believe India and Pakistan would have been better off under continued British rule and it was a mistake for them to insist on complete independence from the Raj.

I've read many British colonialists and imperialists who claim essentially the same thing. To me, it's an utterly bizarre position, but to many of those most directly involved -- especially in the context of Pakistan's separation from India -- it makes perfect sense to assert that a better world was possible under a benign British rule than the jibbering natives could ever hope to have on their own.

We sometimes hear the same claim made about how the United States might be better off -- certainly more civilized! -- if it had not become independent of Britain, and we see the same premise expressed in Africa (with the singular exception of the Union of South Africa -- which serves as the counter-example) when the former colonial powers send their troops to "restore order" among the always restive Natives.

Colonialism and imperialism are the problem, and more of it is not the solution.

We attended a Navajo film festival in 2012 as part of the activities during Indian Market Week in Santa Fe, and one of the films we saw was called "The 6th World." I really liked it because it showed such a different approach to the question of establishing a human presence Out There, in this case on Mars. The pioneers may have used the terminology of colonial expansion and empire, but they were doing something else entirely. Something most Anglos can't even imagine.

Compare and contrast with the Zubrinite vision of Mars colonization...

Are We Nearer The Point of Rethinking the Apparatus Which Rules Us?

From time to time, I still run into the online meme of the "end of empire" -- referring to the United States and its faltering dominance in the world. I have long challenged that premise.

The American Empire is by no means ending; if anything, it's been revitalized since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and today the Imperial USA is as strong or stronger than it has ever been. It has shown itself to be remarkably adaptable to a changing world and has taken advantage of the changes to extend its influence, power and reach without necessarily putting more boots on the ground (though there is no lack of them).


What we've been seeing instead is the "end of the Republic" -- such as it was. It was a pretty anemic Republic all along, riven as it was with factionalism and dominated by the interests of money. Oh. Well.

Ian Welsh and Others Ruminate On the Past, Cogitate On the Future and (Hopefully) Push For Something Better

Ian Welsh has been doing a bang-up job over at his place lately putting forth some fairly extensive notions about where we are, what went wrong with the "Progressive Blog Movement" (aka Netroots), and what we need to think about doing and where we need to think about being in the future.

Ian tends toward glumness, partly I'm sure because he lives in one of those winter-cold and winter-dark countries known as Canada, but there are other reasons and factors as well, including his own sometimes bitter experience with the human species on and off the intertubes. He's never been as dour and hopeless as Arthur Silber, but he's been pretty negative all in all just the same.

The parts of the recent series I've been most closely following are those that deal with the Failure of the Netroots Movement. Ian seems to focus on 2008 and the election of Obama, which occurred  without the Netroots by sidestepping it, ignoring it, paralleling it with an Obama roots political machine. That's as may be, but I pointed out that the problem goes back to the Dean campaign and what came after it, starting in 2002 and 2003; in other words, the problem was there at the beginning of the Netroots "movement."

The problem was, it wasn't a "movement" in more than the abstract sense, or at best, it was a "movement" of the very, very few "players" -- quite distinct and separate from a ground-level movement -- on behalf of a muddle of interests and candidates. Which, to the extent it still exists, it still is.

Ian Welsh Explains It All For You, Again

On Morals and Ethics.

At the link above, Ian Welsh covers The Basics of Ethics and Morality. Every now and then, a reminder is necessary. How we deal with the Other is often a fundamental aspect of Ourselves, and if we at least try to approach the Other on terms that would be pleasing to Ourselves were the shoe on the other foot ("Do unto others" and all that), we're probably going to be in a moral and ethical "good" space. It doesn't mean we will get our way or that we are always right or even that we will receive forgiveness for our own sins.

All it really means is that we try to live as if our lives had some meaning beyond our selfish desires and their momentary gratification.

It's not a hard concept, but it is one that many (including this author at times) need reminding of.

So, Ian has put it in as clear and concise a statement as I've seen recently. And it jars in a way because it is so out of step with the morals and ethics -- so called -- of the predators among us who sincerely believe their time has come and they are liberated to do whatever, to whomever, whenever they like. Ian's vision is like some crystal object out of an antique shop. Beautiful. Decorative. Useless.

And that is not to denounce or condemn his vision at all. In fact, in my view, he's got it right. And doing the right thing, even when it doesn't get you "something" right away, should be normal. But it's not. More and more it is marginal to the point of abnormality.

And so the Fall ensues. As Ian says:

When I hear those who believe in the greater good who want to torture other people, think prison rape is just or who like the idea of making other people crawl and beg, I know they have stared into the abyss too long. They aren’t necessarily indistinguishable from the evil they fight, but they are walking that path.

Yes, they are. They don't necessarily become the evil they believe they are fighting, but they have lost any moral or ethical compass. Further:

At the same time, an insistence on complete moral purity is a road to evil of another kind, it is the road that leads to a man like Robespierre. And a strange part of the route to this evil is a refusal to accept petty human failings (like adultery, for example). A refusal to see that a person who has once done wrong, may still do much good. A refusal to believe that those who have done evil, can be redeemed.

It's my own view that for far too long far too many Americans have limited their consideration of "morality" to other people's sex lives. This is supposedly due to the Puritans' rigid sexual codes, but I think it is more about people's innate need for -- demand for -- gossip and rumor about others and rendering judgement thereon. It's more about human nature and how human nature is shaped by social norms. Sex sells, in other words, and it sells because it is a root interest, in the DNA of the species. In American society that interest and gossip and rendering judgement became the defining measure of "morality" in the Victorian age, in a kind of nostalgia for the colonial era, especially the moral certainty of the Puritans. The Victorian era was a highly disruptive period for most Americans, and uncertainty was the ever-present rule. So to find stability, Americans adopted certain elements of "morality." Dominated by other people's sex lives. Adultery should not be a matter of other people's judgement, nor should it even be discussed in the context of "evil." But here, Ian does it, probably unconsciously, and certainly not deliberately.

Demanding "purity" in public life leads directly to Robespierre and all the many permutations thereof, though not necessarily to the guillotine; no, purges seem sufficient these days. The problem with "purity" is that no one can ever be quite pure enough. There is always someone ready to denounce rivals as impure. Go figure.

But there must be some kind of limit:

I will submit that what must not be tolerated is people who allow themselves to take pleasure in the pain or degradation of other people. What was wrong with George Bush Jr. was that he was a sadist, a man who enjoyed other people’s pain. And worse, he was not sickened by his own sadism, but embraced it, and saw it as his right.

Indeed, this should be the absolute, if there are to be any absolutes at all, and this is where our ruling class and its courtiers and retainers have utterly failed. It's not ultimately a matter of Bush's or Cheney's failures or those of any of the other moral/ethical monstrosities who have been in charge over the years. It is about the failure of post-modern governance to do anything about it. In fact, to categorically refuse to do anything about it, while fiercely punishing even the slightest transgression of the most obscure law among the Lower Orders.

So we come back to what we can control:

In this we come back to the maxim “if you aren’t good, just act good”. Character and personality are built up in part by habit. Kindness, generosity, love, are habits as much as anything else. Your mind is great at justifying whatever you do. Do evil and it will justify it, do good and it will justify that, and over time you will become a better person inside your head, inside your soul. Fake it till you make it.

Habits must be learned, and the best way to learn is through example. The problem we have today is that there are so few decent public examples, and if you don't have them in your own life, you're shit out of luck.

Which is another reason why reminders are so useful.

More on the London Riots

Overnight, the unrest spread affecting Enfield, Walthamstow and Waltham Forest in north London and Brixton in the south of the city.

Yesterday, I was more focused on the reaction among the good white burghers of Britain, and how very race-based so much of the commentary was as a relatively small but significant portion of Tottenham was left in ruins by the mischief and uncivilized behavio[u]r of the "Africans" who inhabit the place.

At that time, it wasn't all that difficult to see why the peaceful protest over the incendiary police shooting of a well-known and apparently well-liked member of the community would turn ugly. A police shooting of a citizen is very rare in Britain -- unlike the case in the United States -- and according to reports, and the complaints of the citizens of Tottenham, the police chose to turn their backs on the people most directly affected and simply clammed up about what happened and why. They offered no explanation, no consideration for the community, and when asked to be more forthcoming, they refused to speak to the people protesting their high-handedness.

Then, when the people protested what they regarded as an official insult, the police formed a cordon around the police station in Tottenham, and at least according to reports, either shoved or beat a 16 year old girl who refused to be pushed around by Authority.

All that is what it is, but Ian Welsh puts an Austerity context to the civil unrest in Britain that should have some resonance in the United States.

The Conservative austerity measures are destroying the possibility of a future for a generation of young people. There is this weird idea amongst English elites, which I encountered in person during my London visit, that the problem in England is their welfare culture. In other words,after a financial crisis virtually entirely caused by the rich, the response has been to slash spending on the poor and middle class to pay for bailouts for the rich, who, by any sane reading of the crisis, caused the disaster.

Yes. Well. That should be obvious, but for some reason it is not, and it has to be repeated over and over and over again just to be heard at all. The response to the economic crisis throughout the West is almost universally to further exacerbate the problem by slashing programs and services for the least fortunate, while simultaneously providing greater and greater amounts of money and benefits to the already hyper-rich the very people who caused the financial collapse in the first place.

Meanwhile in England, the Cameron government’s massive slashes to education hit virtually all at once, making an entire cohort of young people know exactly who just did their level best to destroy their lives. This is important, to put it bluntly, young males who don’t have enough money to settle down with a young female are extraordinarily dangerous to the state.

Surprise!

The question will be -- as it already has been in so much of the world -- what mix of repression and accommodation will be necessary to staunch the riots and rebellions and smooth the path for ever greater looting by the Overclass.

That's what's being tested in London even as we speak...

Welcome to Our Brave New World.

The Obama Problem

I have from time to time offered both criticisms and defenses of His Serenity, Barack "Hoover" Obama -- mostly critical observation of what he is doing and why I think he's doing it. I don't think he is particularly evil or smart for that matter, but I do see him as increasingly self-possessed, self-actuated, and increasingly rigid in his core principles and beliefs.

President Carter with better looks and no Southern accent.

Well, yes. The Carter comparison has been raised since forever, on the presumption that Obama would be a one term president -- which he might well be, and I don't think he really much cares about that.

But lately, the fashion mavens in the Blogosphere have decided to push the notion that Obama is somehow The. Worst. President. Ever. (Excuse me, no.) Aware observers are more than willing to point out that the premise itself is stupid and unworthy, but it's hard not to succumb to the silliness because it is based in a human need to be on a "team" and support or defy the conventional wisdom.

Someone who supports his team feels validated, especially if his captain wins the game. And one thing I can say about Obama -- which I have in other fora -- is that he is a true believer in his own principles and his abilities to institute them through his agency as President.

His primary principle is that of Transcendence. He believes, truly, that it is his role to transcend the partisan divide, to bring the parties together, if not in harmony at least in agreement that something must be done and can be done, and to help hammer out whatever deal is necessary to Make It Happen.

That's what this Debt Crisis Crisis is all about. And it is -- sort of -- looking like he might pull it off.

Meanwhile, I came across a couple of considerations of The Obama Problem today that I think help clarify the picture. The first, via Digby, is by Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast, and it is very good. The upshot is that Obama is doing what he is doing -- which often seems incomprehensible to observers -- because he really believes in the principle of transcendence and he is determined to stick with his principles no matter what.

He apparently really believes—still!—in civic-republican notions of government as an arena for reasoned deliberation. That he could still think this is akin to a child believing in Santa Claus until he’s 15—but apparently he does. The journalist Alec MacGillis captured this conviction well in a profile he did of Obama for the British New Statesman back in 2008. Barack Obama, he wrote, “was running not on a record of past achievement or on a concrete program for the future, but instead on the simple promise of thoughtfulness.”

From this perspective a unilateral action would be almost impious—or at least, if you’d rather aim a little lower than God, anti-Madisonian. Obama would be giving up on his ideal. Of course he should have long since given up on it. I was with him at the beginning—his conviction that politics could be better and more deliberative was one of the things I found appealing about the man. But that ship sailed long ago, and Obama’s position has declined from admirable principle to indefensible fetish. Politics simply isn’t going to get better and more deliberative any time soon.

The third reason the president probably won’t do it is related to the second, but it’s more personal. Unilateral action would be at odds with Obama’s image of himself. In his article, MacGillis defined thoughtfulness Obama style as “the notion that the leadership of the country should be entrusted not on the basis of résumé and platform, but on the prospect of applying to the nation's problems one man's singularly well-tempered intelligence.” This is pretty obviously a dead-on description of Obama’s view of himself and his potential as president.

I think it is really a good description of what is going on. Of course Tomasky, like many others, is OUTRAGED!!!!™ and wants Obama to Stop This Nonsense Right Now!!! Yes, well. Good luck with that. At no point during his reign on the Throne has Obama shown even a hint of giving up his principles -- though he will cheerfully give up just about everything else.

The other Worst. President. Essay I read today was by Sterling Newberry via Ian Welsh. Sterling, gosh, goes back a long way, into the mists of Internet times, and he's always been an acute observer and analyst of what's happening. In today's essay at The Sorcerer's Apprentice he examines what is wrong, desperately wrong, with the Obama Reign, and I think he gets it mostly right.

I especially like his historical notes and this part:

The President who Obama most resembles is Herbert Hoover, another one of those chief magistrates of government who became inflexible and iron willed. His idea of compromise is that he cuts out what he thinks is a compromise, and then relentlessly grind on it. He's dealing with people whose idea of compromise is a woman having an orgasm while she is raped. Neither of these two sides have actually compromised very much, other than compromising on extending the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy.

Hoover was a malfortunate president. Unfortunate is not a sufficient adjective to describe it. He inherited an economy that was about to explode. He takes office in March of 1929, the move to January would, to no small extent be because the long gap between election and inauguration paralyzed the country when later he would lose the Presidency, and in October of 1929, the stock market plunges in what is know as "The Crash." In reality such a crash was essentially inevitable after the Olmstead Break in August. In effect he had 5 months of Presidency. The rest was a long grind and heavy flail. His response was not without compassion and, within his understanding, he worked hard to do what was right. He simply was a mammoth in a lake that had been swamped by a breaking glacier dam, to be found, frozen, as an oddity. His failure was that as his policies failed, he doubled and tripled down on them. In essence, he turned a single large downturn, into three back to back downturns, and left the very faith in capitalism and democracy bruised behind him.

FDR and Hoover had once been political friends, but his rants and threats, the most famous being his offer to let FDR be President early, if FDR would scrap the "so-called New Deal." FDR replied tartly that he was still a private citizen until inauguration, his term as Governor of New York having ended.

Like me and a number of others, Newberry is relating Obama to Hoover's presidency, and he explains why very well.

On the other hand, when it comes to the Debt Crisis Crisis, I think he is somewhat off the mark in that he doesn't seem to be able to relate it (or actually much of anything Obama has done) to Obama's principle of transcendence.

That's why I highlight both articles today: the one by Tomasky which gets into the underlying reasons why Obama is doing what he is doing -- though Tomasky is calling it wrong in all kinds of ways -- and Newberry's, take which relates Obama's actions with those of other Worst Presidents and takes him to task for missing so many opportunities to please The People (and his more leftward critics) by taking bold(er) and more authoritative/authoritarian action.

I honestly don't think Obama is doing what he is doing for political gain. He is doing it both because he can, and because he must. He is a believer, in other words, and a man of Principle. Unshakable Principle.

This is what Principled Governance looks like. It isn't pretty. And I don't think it is what we really want.

Bummer -- Ian Welsh Envisions the Permanent Depression

Ian Welsh predicts we're headed into a more or less permanent economic depression due to an unshakable addiction to fossil fuel and a refusal of the political class to face up to the reality of the situation.

"Baked into the cake" as he says.

Ian Welsh has been one of my favo(u)rite bloggers for quite a long time. His often sour Canuk insight into things going wrong is typically spot on. And I'll grant that the ingredients of the cake he's talking about -- that is to say governments' response to the financial unpleasantness of the last few years -- were spoiled and inadequate before the cake was made, but I'm not so sure he has it right otherwise.

The deal is that the economy that crashed was, much like the post-WWI economy, a "bubble economy." In other words, its promise and progress weren't "real." Some of us saw very well how frail its underpinnings were, and some of us did our best to sidestep the Juggernaut, just stay out of the way. Of course some of those who did are prancing around now in a kind of triumphalist stupor, but Ian is not one of them.

He saw how bad things were likely to get and why: unfettered greed, craven indifference, stupid and passive publics, governing incompetence and complicity. Well, at least in North America.

What I've called the Endless Recession, he suggests is going to be a very long Depression, far outlasting the Great Depression of the 1930's. Could be.

It’s gonna be a long 20 to 30 years folks. Does this have to be the future? In theory, no. In practice, well, yes, apparently it does.

On the other hand, I see what's going on from a somewhat different perspective. It's been obvious to me from the beginning of the Crash way back when -- and the collapse really began in 2007 -- that this situation would become the catalyst, whether intentional or not, for a major economic restructuring in the "Developed World."

The problem of bubble economics is only part of what's been going haywire in the United States for a good long time. As has been often repeated, bubble economies are not sustainable, yet once on a bubble track, it's very hard to get off it. When the only way -- or the "best" way -- to make money is the way it's been done in this country for many a long year, by inflating and deflating bubbles over and over again, you're on a collision course with catastrophe, guaranteed.

It's happened frequently in Western history, and the constant inflation and deflation of economic bubbles in Europe was a big spur to colonization and settlement in North America. People wanted to get away from what was going on back in the Old Country. To some extent, European imperialism of the 18th and 19th Centuries can be attributed to the exhaustion of bubble economies within Europe itself (and a case can be made that the bubbles themselves were partly spurred by the seizure of immense quantities of gold and other valuables from the Natives of the Americas and their wide distribution through Europe from Spain and Portugal.)

Now we're talking about never re-inflating a bubble economy again. That's an interesting concept, and it is not necessarily a depressing one. If bubble economies are unsustainable, as they are, and they have a tendency to spur -- maybe even require -- Imperialist expansion to avoid the Ultimate Economic Collapse or what seers consider the Ultimate Collapse, maybe it's a good thing, not a bad thing, to just get off the bubble economy treadmill altogether.

The Developed World has reached the point where it cannot -- apparently -- sustain itself without seizing the assets and potentially the territories of others. That's primarily what the current Imperial Project is all about. The Arabs have been designated as the "Indians" to be crushed, exterminated and stolen from, much as the United States developed its domestic empire by exterminating the Natives and stealing their land (and much else.)

Oil is the lubrication for all this, control of oil is the reason for it, and an unsustainable fossil-fueled global economy is the consequence. Domestic and overseas populations are forced to pay for Imperial Projects through seizures of their assets. But it can only go so far, and in the end various Imperial Projects collide with unfortunate results.

"Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it." Sure, sure. But the repetition is never quite the same each time out, and if we are going through yet another bubble-collapse-Imperial-Overreach-let's-not-do-this-again phase, it is not without learning some of the lessons of the past.

What Ian sees as an Enduring Depression may well be something else, and it may well be directable toward positive rather than negative ends. Figuring out how that might be done is the challenge...