Losing My Religion

Well. The last couple of days have been quite the eye-opener as I spent too much time commenting and reading comments over at Glenn's Place on this Citizens United Thing that the Supremes botched royally.

I hardly even went out at all, except to get a new monitor when the old one died in the middle of a heated argument.

The first day, Glenn proposed What the Supreme Court Got Right, based largely on his understanding of the First Amendment and how the ruling upheld the First Amendment, which was the right thing to do in any case, regardless of outcome. And apparently regardless of the process to get there. According to Glenn the Court decided correctly that the campaign finance laws that were overturned were unconstitutional infringements on the First Amendment by interfering with Corporate rights to poltical speech. Rights which were, according to the majority, guaranteed to Corporate "persons" just as they were to natural persons. Rights which were, as far as Glenn was concerned, essentially "absolute."

To say that Glenn was taken to task is putting it mildly. His defense of the ruling and of his philosophy took a beating from many of his regulars as well as from a wide range of legal commentators who apparently just popped over for the day. There were some truly exquisite take-aparts of both the majority's opinion and Glenn's defense thereof. It did keep me engaged to say the least. And I tend not to be fond of legal persnicketyness on the Internet. Scotusblog and Balkinization (to name just a couple) give me a migraine on a good day. And even some of the legal nitpickery that turns up on Glenn's blog from time to time is aggravating. And he tries to keep it down.

But these were really strongly argued rejoinders to Glenn's and the Court's position, clear, plain, and devastating. By the time the day was done, his argument was basically destroyed and in tatters. Those who continued to defend him and the Court majority on this matter tended to be confined to a small (and shrinking) circle of "Libertarians, Propertarians, and Randians of all stripes" as I put it, a fringe of a fringe in political terms, which to me was very enlightening about Glenn's actual political leanings. It wasn't pretty. But I never expected anything else.

It's the kind of politics of Individualism that got going, ironically, during the upheavals of the 1960's, the Politics of Liberation and led directly to Reaganism. Which in turn opened the floodgates to Libertarian, Propertarian and Randian nonsense of all stripes, which is still "fringe" politics, but which has a strong influence in the halls of Power, though perhaps not as strong as it once had.

There were two strong political threads in the 1960's revolts and upheavals, one of Liberation, one of Community.

Liberationists were more inclined to make trouble, shall we say, for the authorities and everyone else and to call for major reordering of society and government based on principles Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness found in the Declaration, as well as on the fulfillment of the promises of the Constitution that had been long, long delayed for vast numbers of Americans. Liberationists were about Rights and Freedom more than anything else. Which, at the time, was the primary energy behind the Anti-War Movement which became huge and almost mainstream.

The other side of the '60's revolt was far less Individualist and much more Communitarian. Those so inclined tended more to withdraw from society than to try to remake it through demand and revolt. Communes of various kinds cropped up all over the country, attracting apparently like-minded people who wanted to work and live together on behalf of mutual interest and establish a viable social alternative to the American Way of Life.

Both of these threads seem to originate in the Progressive Era.

The Genius of the Reaganite Revolution was to find ways to both harness and suppress the energy of the revolts that were roiling the nation, and to preside over the dismantling of Progressivism as the commonly employed operating system for government, first in California, later in the whole country. Many of the Liberationists ultimately became Reaganites; the Communitarians mostly faded away after some truly horrible commune-experimental societies that went grossly awry. We needn't detail them here.

Glenn was born late in the 1960's and never experienced any of the ferment of the era directly. At one time, he enjoyed expressing his contempt for the Failures of the 1960's Movements, much as many of the punks his age tend to do, but he seemed to moderate his stance as the Decade of Insanity under the Busheviks wore on. My position was always that the Busheviks were Revolutionaries (or Counter-Revolutionaries as the case may be) who were engaged in one of the most radical efforts to subvert and transform the American Government as had ever been attempted. And they were succeeding. This is something Glenn and many others didn't seem to understand at all. They saw what the Busheviks were doing as of a piece with the past, and as incremental change, to be met with incremental mitigation and progress, not open revolt and principled but modest opposition. Sometimes, even principles could be abandoned. It wasn't all that different from the Democratic Party opposition to the Busheviks -- which was essentially accommodationist most of the time, punctuated by episodes of OUTRAGE!!!!™

When I noticed that this attitude was common on the Internet, it became clear to me that many of the so-called Progressives online were actually not that opposed to Bushevism. Most of them certainly didn't and don't see it as a mortal danger to what's left of the Republic as I do. If anything, they are more OUTRAGED!!!!™ at the cautious mitigationism of the Obama Regime. They attack the Democrats much more lustily than they do the Republicans.

Some of the specific things the Busheviks did were wrong (like the Iraq invasion) but there is really not that much online Progressive opposition to the overarching ideology of the Busheviks: Corporatism and Imperialism ruled through Autocracy. At least until recently, there wasn't even a recognition that that's what the Busheviks were up to -- or if there was, it wasn't considered all that important compared to the specific errors needing opposition. "Unnecessary war" in particular. Focus on more Rights and Freedom issues, less on ideological "purity."

In essence, this is Liberationism. And it's not that far from Libertarianism, Propertarianism, and Randian bullshit of all stripes.

Which is a very round about way of getting to the Second Day of the Supreme Court dervish at Glenn's Place.

It became something of a dirgy spectacle. So to counter my funk, I post another video of R.E.M.'s really outstanding show in Toronto all those years ago. By the time I'm done, I'll have ransacked all my R.E.M. shit and all of it on YouTube too. Post-Adolescent angst rules! [sings: "That's me in the spot. Light. Losing my religion..."] How old is Michael Stipe now? Oh, who cares.

On the Second Day, Glenn acknowledged that he'd been run through the wringer by his commenters, but rather than acknowledge the stupendous merits of his opponents' case, he decided on a course of insult and contempt on the one hand and showy tautology and logical fallacies on the other, over and over again.

Well, this had the interesting effect of dragging some of his defenders off the sidelines to comment that his superb argument in favor of the Supreme Court decision was so tightly and comprehensively put together and presented that though they were initially opposed to the Court majority opinion, he had by wit and strategy, convinced them they were all wrong and Glenn and the Court majority were right. "Thank you, Glenn, for opening my eyes!!"

Yeah. Sure. Quite the contrast from the day before, that's for sure.

They all said the said the same thing in essentially the same way. Hm. Fascinating. How does that work on the Intertubes?

Every now and again, another hot-shot legal mind would turn up to demolish Glenn's and the Court's arguments again, and do so beautifully, but I noticed that Glenn did not respond to any of these outstanding rebuttals, on either day. What he would do, instead, is offer up some occasional snark to this or that commenter who questioned the ruling and his defense of it, or who went off on what he thought were tangents about potential "outcomes," which in his view were not germane. He lit in to me angrily when I brought up the fact that he is an expat and doesn't have to live with the consequences of this or any other SCOTUS ruling if he doesn't want to, which might be coloring his overall dismissiveness toward those who thought the consequences of the ruling could be devastating to what's left of American democracy. He accused me of using right wing attacks, ad hominem and worse, scraping the bottom of the barrel for whatever filth I could find. Oh! My! Our Glenn is a little bit pissy, isn't he? But the point stands. When you have the option not to live and you don't live with the consequences of a rule you are defending, your approach to and attitude toward what you are observing, let alone defending, is different. He can deny it all he wants. From Rio de Janeiro. But I analogize it in my own mind to how I regarded events in California when I lived, say, in Florida or Alaska. I was interested, of course, but since what was happening didn't directly affect me, nor could it, my point of view was different by definition than those who were in the midst of what was going on.

That's as may be in any case. The upshot of the Second Day's examination of Glenn's position and the Court's ruling was that it's getting pretty grim, night is falling, it's nearly over, the American experiment in Self-Rule has self-destructed, the Corporations have won and Glenn, for all his posturing otherwise, is just as happy it is so. He's not playing on Our Team. He's on Scalia's team, the Destroyers and Punishers. Yeeks!

This seems to be a dawning but not yet confirmed revelation. He will say it's the Constitution, but we know...

Yes. Well.

Ultimately, we Americans who don't have the option to emigrate outside the country face some real, and I think fundamental, questions. Yes, the Corporations have won. We are outside the gates of the Palace, and it doesn't matter if we get "inside" or not, Rule doesn't depend on The People, or even need acknowledge The People anymore.

So what to do?

Most people, I am convinced, just as our Rulers are convinced, will simply submit and comply with whatever Our Rulers command. That's the ground that was laid under Bush and Cheney, and we aren't going back to some Halcyon way things used to be. It won't happen.

So what to do?

For most, the answer is a given, "Yield." For others, the answer is, "Accept internal exile. Try to start anew." For still others, the answer is, "Fight..."

I'm of a mind of what happened when Native Americans came to realize that they had lost their struggle with the invaders, and fighting any longer was simply going to destroy what little remnant was left of the First Peoples... and they stopped. Submitted. It was taken for granted at the time that Natives would soon be extinct and would disappear altogether, never to be seen or heard from again; their time was done.

And I look around now, and the descendants of the survivors who yielded to the invaders are probably more numerous than Indigenous peoples ever were in the land, more and more are hopeful, industrious, thriving, some are wealthy beyond imagining thanks to casino gambling among other things, their culture is by no means dead or dying, in fact it is reviving in many ways and many places, and their place in American society is still not secure, but it is far more so than ever before.

I'm of a mind of what happened when African Americans were faced with the awful truth of Jim Crow, and too many their leading voices were saying "Don't fight. It'll be OK. Or if you fight, do it through established channels. Don't make a ruckus. You'll survive." Of course many didn't survive. But when the Civil Rights struggle was resumed in earnest generations later, African Americans won, largely through appeal to the better angels that were still so much a part of American consciousness and conscience.

I look around now and a Black man is President, working hard on the Corporate Agenda, and though the position of African Americans in society is still not secure by any means, it is far more so than ever before. So long as ...

Is it now the turn of ourselves, that pseudo majority of Americans who believe in Community as well as Liberty to yield, submit to Our Generous Corporate Overlords, since now, all the institutions and avenues of Democracy have been overwhelmed by Corporate Interests?

I can't answer that question right now.

[sings: "I thought that I heard you laughing
I thought that I heard you sing
I think I thought I saw you try

But that was just a dream
That was just a dream

But that was just a dream
Try, cry, why try?
That was just a dream
Just a dream, just a dream
Dream ]

Fade to black.

It's the End of the World As We Know It -- los dos

Look upon my work... ye mighty, and despair...



The keening and rending of garments over the Supreme Court's rendering the entire electoral system over to the Corporatist owners of the Government is almost more stunning than the ruling itself.

This Court has gone clear over the edge. Into realms not seen for at least a hundred years, and maybe not since the pre-Civil War court. It's shameful, deeply reactionary, and utterly contrary to the main thrust of American and Human History.

It's easy to reject it.

It's not so easy to know what to do about it.

A modest proposal: start by legislating free political advertising on major mass media. No purchased ads allowed. Then declare unlimited free and equal access to some sort of public access political station in every media market.

The key to to forbid the purchase of political advertising.

And then, impeach these rotten sons-of-financiers and stockbrokers.

On Which Party Should Expire

Hm.

Got into an interesting series of conflicts last night over the implication that one or the other political party should disappear -- and which one it should be.

The CW that's trying to gel in the Lefty Blogosphere is that the Dems are so fundamentally corrupted and incompetent (viz: the Coakley-Brown Thing) that they should have their ticket punched for the last time and be sent packing, never to return. And Goat for Azazel-like, they will be our Sin Eaters and sent into the desert, there to... disappear.

Or the Dems should be shunned and ostracized and a Third Party formed by all the hot-headed Internet Progressives. Yeah. That'll work. G'head. Try it. How about putting Ezra in charge, since everybody loves him.

Oddly, the psycho party -- the Republican Party -- is left immune from all this puerile "one of the parties has got to go or I'm gonna form a Third Party" harrumphing.

When I point out that our electoral system only allows for two parties at a time, and third parties cannot, to a mathematical certainty, ever reach the point of significant power, it's generally understood that is the case, but there is much fussing over it. "Why can't a third party succeed?" It's the Math. The two established parties have priority of place (and more money than God, thanks to their Corporate sponsors -- the same corporations sponsoring both parties, how convenient) and an upstart third party, except under very extraordinary conditions, cannot reach a plurality sufficient to take the election before one of the established parties does. It's a built in feature of our winner-take-all electoral system.

Ok, runs the thinking, then one of the parties has to go away: "I know!" chimes the chorus: "The Democrats! Let's make the Democrats go away! I don't like them! They make me sick!"

How... intriguing.

So I point out that we have two wings or branches of a single Corporate Party to choose from right now, and the only viable choice a voter has when one of the Parties is unsatisfactory is the other party. One of the Parties, the Republican Party, is psychotic, demonstrably dangerous, bloodthirsty, rapacious, etc, etc. The other one, the Democrats, is their enabler. So you want the Democrats to go away?

Why not have the psychotic Republicans go away instead?

It's like a new and impossible thought for many people. The idea of disposing of the Dems once and for all is easy to grasp, it seems. They are so disappointing they deserve to expire. "At least with Republicans, you know what you're getting." OK... but they are psycho, certifiable, deeply dangerous.

Why keep them around?

"Well, you just can't 'exterminate' the Republicans! Anyway, there will always be bloodthirsty psychos in politics! It's the way things are!"

Jeebus.

In most civilized societies, bloodthirsty psycho political parties aren't even allowed to begin with. This has to do with something that happened a while back, which fewer and fewer are remembering, when some bloodthirsty psycho parties rose to power in Europe and Asia, primarily, but they have also done their dirty work elsewhere, and commenced to... erm... "misbehave" as is their nature. Leading to, oh I don't know, genocide, mayhem and World War among other things. Psycho parties are dangerous not just on the micro scale of countries, but globally.

We've had experience.

Thus, most civilized societies today ban psycho parties outright.

Yet our psycho Republican Party is constantly indulged, not just by Democrats but by practically everyone. Why?

Why would anyone think that if our current political conundrum calls for the creation of a New Party, in a two party system, the one party that should expire is the "enabling" party, not the "psychotic" party?

This makes no sense, none at all.

It's self evident (at least to me) that if the psychos were locked up and their party was eliminated, the enablers wouldn't have to... enable that psychosis any more and might be free (yay! freedom!) to be and do what they want to be, which is apparently to become the Good-Burgher Moderate/Conservative Technocrat/Manager Party. Of the Republic.

In other words, pretty much what Republicans were in the 1950s.

So my proposal is that we work to get rid of Republican-psychotics, let the Democrats be the Moderate/Conservative Party they really, really, really want to be, in other words, let them become the Right Wing of our political spectrum, the sole (and perhaps appropriate) Corporate Party, and let us build a New Party by coalescing the many leftish "third parties" (Greens, Progressive Labor, Socialists, etc.) into a single People's Party (of the Republic) and go from there.

Makes perfect sense to me. It's OUTRAGEOUS!!!!™ to some others, who insist that it's the Democrats who need to go away or be transformed, infiltrated, turned Left.

I say no. Let the Dems be the Corporate Party they really want to be, and get rid of the Rs. Legally. Build a new People's Party from the kernels already extant, that will operate well to the Left of the Democrats.

It's POLICY!!!

The teeth gnashing and garment rending spectacle on the so-called "left" over the Coakley-Brown Thing in Massachusetts is mostly focused either on scapegoating political personalities in the White House (Emanuel, of course, and Axelrod) and/or Massachusetts (the Dem candidate herself comes to mind, hmmm?), or on dissecting and blaming the poor "messaging" -- ie: advertising and presentation of The Message on the TeeVee -- of Dems in general and Coakley in particular.

When people point out that, "No, the problem is really the POLICIES coming out of the White House and the Dem Party apparat. People HATE them," the wall of blank stares goes up among the Important Dems or the would-be Important Dems, and accusations of being a Republican plant, or for God's sake, a Palinite arise.

In other words, you can't say anything about the Policies of this regime without getting lynched for being a Republican, because the only criticisms of the Policies of this regime are apparently Republican criticisms.

Dems either ignore the policies and wonder where the message is, or they love the policies and wonder, bewildered, what happened to the message?

Bernays, you see. With the right message, apparently, people will buy anything.

The only thing that really matters is the message.

The POLICIES of this White House have been straightforward Neo-Liberal economic prescriptions, and straightforward Neo-Conservative foreign policy prescriptions, with a somewhat more human face.

PEOPLE HATE THESE POLICIES. It's the policies. It's not the "message." What's so hard to understand?

The domestic economy is in tatters, has been for some time now, and all the prescriptions coming out of the White House so far have been straightforward Neo-Liberal policies, providing essentially unlimited backstopping to the top of the private sector (ie: the Banksters and the Financial Sector in general) and forcing all the costs onto the vanishing middle and the expanding lower classes.

The POLICY of the White House is to do nothing to directly increase employment, for example. That has the desired effect of keeping unemployment rates high. Which has the multiple desired effect of driving down wages, benefits, and living standards for the vast majority of Americans. Their costs stay the same -- or even increase -- and they get no debt relief (except the extremely costly option of bankruptcy, which in many cases will leave them still in debt for even more than when they filed!); their incomes are cut significantly, their debt and tax load increases, and it's all a matter of POLICY. Is it any wonder people are pissed? Of course it isn't, and the White House knows it. Still they do nothing to change their policies.

They do nothing to provide a backstop to the deterioration of conditions in lower down in the private sector, either. Small business is vanishing from this country because small business people and independent operators don't have the money and they can't get the money to sustain "business." It's all going to the top of the financial pyramid and to the proliferating Imperial wars of aggression. It's POLICY that it be so. This is White House policy, eagerly enabled and abetted by the Congress, which is as thoroughly in thrall to the Corporatists as the White House is.

It's not about MESSAGE. It's about WHAT THE GOVERNMENT IS DOING.

And it ain't doing jackshit for most people, that's a fact.

The HCR debacle is just icing on the cake.

This is cryingly obvious, even to the White House. They know that the People are upset, and they even seem to know why. But they won't do anything to change their policies from the Neo-Liberal/Neo-Con path they're on.

And I submit that they won't change their policies because simply don't believe the People will do anything to force them to change those policies. I'd go so far as to say they don't believe the People can do anything. "Hah hah, suckers!"

I grieve for Haiti, for example. It tears me up; I become extremely emotional over what I see happening there -- as a matter of POLICY -- but this is standard operating procedure now for disasters, and there is every indication it's going to get worse.

The POLICIES are fairly clear: aid to be delayed and denied as long as necessary to compel "voluntary" evacuation of the disaster zone. Any excuse at all is acceptable, just keep the aid from reaching most of the survivors as long as it takes to get them to leave. Let the vast majority of the injured die; let most of the trapped stay where they are and die. Do good works for public consumption, the rescues, the airlifts, the stockpiling of supplies, the scatter-shot heroism, but do not provide services or supplies in anything like sufficient quantities or more than randomly for most people -- so as to get them to leave. Blame the "debris," the "danger," the "looters," the "anarchy."

Be prepared to force evacuation at the point of a gun if necessary if they won't go voluntarily.

Once the disaster region is cleared, commence partial rebuilding a la New Orleans and parts of Indonesia (among other places) to ensure the comfort and convenience of the Neo-Liberal elites. Period.

Get the picture?

It's not about the message. It's about the failure of Policies to address the catastrophe among the People.

I mean it. We're all Haitians now. Their fate is ours. And if we don't awake and arise -- soon -- it will be too late (it may already be) to "bend" the course of history.

The End of the World As We Know It

Uhh...

Well, the Coakley/Brown Thing has put something of a cherry on the top of all the horrors lately.

Imagine it. After fifty years -- no, more than fifty years, well more -- of A Kennedy representing Massachusetts in the Senate, some middle-aged still-hunky wingnut dude, beloved by the Teabaggers, will be declaming from the Well of The Senate on his opposition to everything the Kennedys were (supposedly) for.

The World Turned Upside Down.

And there was another big earthquake, though not quite as big as the big one the other day, in Haiti, putting the survivors there into another well-justified panic.

Of course the Teabaggers and their sponsors will take this ball and run with it for all it's worth, it's what they do.

The rest of us get to watch; that's what we do.

"Camp No;" Dr. Evil

Everybody is whispering in hushed and frightened tones about Scott Horton's investigative piece in the March, 2010, online edition of Harper's, a tale which could be of mayhem and the murder of three apparently innocent Guantanamo captives, all of whom were set for release, apparently tortured to death on the night of June 9, 2006, at a mysterious facility just off the GWOT concentration camp perimeter, dubbed "Camp No", where -- again, apparently -- the odd captive was now and again taken for "special treatment." Apparently. Or maybe not.

Well. One doesn't know. One has no way of knowing. The Offical Story is that the three dead captives that night committed suicide by tying their arms and feet, stuffing rags down their throats and hanging themselves in their cells from ropes made of shreds from their clothing and bedding. All three. At the same time. This was, claimed a shrieking, hysterical, Queeg-like caricature of a PrizonKamp Kommandant named "Admiral" Harry Harris (sure, whatever, Dude) a perfidious act of "asymmetrical warfare!!!™" designed to thwart the Pure Aims And Goals of American Goodness, an act that will live in Infamy, and on and on and on, spit flying out of his foam-flecked mouth, fire from his coal-black eyes.

Anyone who remembers the incident, and it was in all the press and media at the time, surely remembers Harris's over-the-top description of what happened and some of us remember the aftermath, a mad scramble to lock down the captives even more than they already were, take all their stuff, particularly their papers, and monitor and dog them 24/7. We may also remember their hunger strikes over and over, protesting their brutal treatment among other things (oh, like their innocence or their languishing without charges in a concentration camp in Cuba for years-and-years, that sort of thing.) We may remember there were occasional suicides among the captives. And there were persistent reports of torture.

From Horton's investigation, it is not possible to know what really happened. He says that witnesses came forth after Obama was elected, went to the Justice Department, spoke with highly placed lawyers thereat, and were promised a thorough investigation of what could have been a very terrible crime.

And nothing happened.

The investigation, if it was done at all, was closed with nothing more than a hint as to why: the "gist" of witness statements could not be confirmed. kthxbai.

Very strange, even suspicious.

Of course, that's Horton's point. And part of the problem here is that there have been so many lies, so much deception, so much perfidy and so much lawlessness, murder and mayhem surrounding practically every aspect of the So-Called Global War on Terror and its numerous extensions and side actions that it's really not possible for a mere mortal to know or understand what the hell is going on in any given case, let alone get a handle on the whole picture.

From appearances, the implications of the Horton piece in Harpers (and I really do suggest any reader subscribe to Harper's if only for Horton's periodic reporting and opining, there's always plenty more to get into, and the archives are a stupendous resource, but I digress)... the implications are that the three dead captives delivered to the camp clinic the night of June 9, 2006, were tortured to death en masse at the off-campus facility dubbed "Camp No," a purported Black Site, used for "special purposes" by... whomever.

And then a frantic effort was ordered and made to plant a cover story that the three had suicided themselves, perfidiously, and anyone who breathed a word about the truth was to be hounded until they desisted. The camp was the scoured for any potential "evidence" that could be used against prisoners and/or their attorneys, and -- apparently most importantly -- the "asymmetrical warfare" tactic of hunger strikes by the prisoners was to be ended once and for all.

Which may be ultimately what this is all about. I don't know.

The flaw in Horton's piece, so to speak, is that the story he tells lacks sufficient context to clearly understand what was happening in the concentration camp, the long-time resistance of the captives, and their persistent hunger strikes that were gaining a good deal of attention world-wide and bringing the whole operation of the Guantanamo prison camp facilities under increasing scrutiny and criticism. The three dead captives were, it is my understanding -- though I can't say I "know" anything about it -- were resisting their captivity, had been targeted (and at least one of them was scheduled) for release, and they had all participated in hunger strikes, may have actually been on a hunger strike when their deaths occurred.

Another prisoner is mentioned in the piece who claims in his attorney's affidavit that he was severely abused -- tortured -- that night as well, beaten and tormented for hours, but he survived. Apparently, he, too was on a hunger strike.

The upshot of the actions at the camp afterwards was to prevent the captives from communicating with one another and from communicating in confidence with their attorneys so as to prevent them from organizing further acts of resistance of any kind.

But resistance and a simple hunger strike (plus the occasional suicide) is hard to square with the kind of brutality and mayhem toward the captives that is still being reported out of Guantanamo.

There is still a lot we don't know.

But one thing that comes out of Horton's report is that the Department of Justice may be so corrupted it is now irredeemable. I doubt he would go that far, but given the backturning of the Department on this case, one of many egregious incidents, the prognosis for "Justice" ever being achieved through the agency of this Department is becoming vanishingly small.

It's the Fear

"People are scared of the poor." -- Gen Russel Honore (Ret) to CNN regarding the evacuation of Belgian medical personnel from a makeshift clinic in Port-Au-Prince

I don't have cable teevee, so there is no 24 hour news cycle to keep me in a constant state of agitation and OUTRAGE!!!!!™, but the stories out of Haiti are getting more and more outrageous, even in the print and online versions of the news I do see.

Many times, it's been pointed out that the survivors of the earthquake have no access to food, water, emergency medical attention and care, and that they are doing for themselves what they can while aid pours into the airport and sits there.

It is said to sit there for two reasons: "There's no infrastructure" for transport and distribution of the pallets of supplies, and "There's no security" for those doing the distribution.

In other words, "It's not safe," and "We couldn't get it to Those People anyway."

Huh.

Just like Katrina.

The aid agents, even Our Dauntless Armed Forces, are scared to death of the Natives running wild, and they have no idea how they can possibly get supplies to the survivors anyway, not having clear, smooth access roads and convenient helipads and distribution nodes around the suffering city.

This is disgusting.

But it has become the Status Quo thanks to the "success of the Katrina Exercise" in which the suffering survivors were made to suffer further while political campaigns continued (seeing President Clinton stumping for Coakley in Massachusetts the other day, though he's supposed to be UN Special Envoy to Haiti, more than chapped my gizzard, let me tell you) and everyone who could provide immediate assistance to the survivors was belayed from doing so for Fear of the Native Hordes and what they would do to their rescuers.

"Force Protection" was the most important thing of all, and until that was sorted out completely, no one could either enter or leave New Orleans except under very special circumstances.

For days on end. And many people suffered needlessly and some died because of it.

So it is now in Port-Au-Prince.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, said the evacuation of the clinic's medical staff was unforgivable.

"Search and rescue must trump security," Honoré said. "I've never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there." -- Gen Russel Honore, Ret.

Yes, well, sorry General, the VouDou is gonna getcha if Les Noirs don't do it first. {{{{{{{shudder}}}}}}

Priorities.

And for poor Haiti, the priority appears to be applying even more of Le Doctrine de Choc through fear and neglect because doing anything else is simply outside the parameters of Good Practice.

Peoples of the World arise. This is your fate, too.

Help For Haiti

My man Chris Floyd details some of the global Corporatist "help" for Haiti over the last couple of decades, a stark tale of perfidy and woe, which of course is now being touted by the International Corporatist Conspiracy (hm, that has a ring to it) as having provided Hope to those poor unfortunate people, Hope that has been severely tested by this earthquake, this latest calamity to hit the west side of the Island of Hispanola, Hope that must be restored as quickly as possible by restoring as much as possible of the Globalist Corporatist infrastructure of exploitation to functionality.

In other words, clean up some of the mess, dispose of the bodies of the dead, and get back to work ("you lazy n-words.")

I watched President Clinton on the NewsHour last night appealing for Americans to send Help For Haiti, and at times, it seemed that he was pretending to be King of Haiti, referring to it and its suffering people as "we" repeatedly, and then, strangely it seemed, he'd focus on the 150 UN personnel who were trapped under the ruins of the UN Peace-Keeping Headquarters. Over and over again he mentioned them. It's an awful thing, there's no doubt about that, but they're a portion, and a small portion at that, of the dead and wounded in Port Au Prince and its environs. But at times, it seemed they were the only victims of the earthquake he could grasp or imagine, the 150 trapped and presumed dead UN personnel.

But then, it's not so odd after all. President Clinton is Special UN Envoy to Haiti. The UN personnel are there as enforcers of Globalist Corporatist Authority, they are the support structure for the sham-democracy that has been imposed on the Haitians, and they are the first line of defense against the restoration of the Aristide version of Social Democracy in Haiti. Clinton focuses on the UN personnel because it's his job, but more than that, the loss of these personnel is potentially devastating for the Program of Global Corporatist Exploitation. Never mind the Natives lost in the calamity. There were always too many of them anyway. Earthquakes are one way of disposing of the surplus.

One thing that has come up again and again in the news reporting of the situation in Haiti is the belief that there is "no government" in Haiti, and constant fretting that the Natives are running wild in the absence of Law and Order -- that of course can only be imposed upon them by the presence of heavily armed Robo-Airborne Troops and Marines, since the UN mission is out of commission. A startling revelation, however, is that the troops and their commanders don't seem to think the Natives are running wild, and at least at this point, the troops' focus is on humanitarian relief. This seems to come as something of a shock to many news people.

A Haitian is shown in a Boston Globe slide show (bless you, Digby) carrying a bag of corn meal or rice away from the ruins of a supermarket in Port Au Prince, and the Reuters caption says:

A resident loots food from the Caribbean supermarket in downtown Port-au-Prince after a major earthquake hit the Haitian capital, January 14, 2010.

For God's sake, news services can't imagine black folk doing anything but "looting" under the circumstances, so that's what we are told they are doing in taking food from a ruined supermarket in the midst of a calamity when there are no other resources available. It's not "looting." It's survival.

At least many of the commenters on the Boston Globe Haiti slideshow protested the caption. Good for them.

The commonplace notion in the media that there's "no government" in Haiti inadvertently puts to mock the whole theory of Globalist Corporatist installation of a compliant government in such places. The "government" of Haiti, installed and protected by Globalist Corporatist forces and interests, is essentially irrelevant and non-existent as far as the news media is concerned. There are no "services." Police do not patrol. "Order" is not being maintained. Food and water is not being distributed. The trapped are not being rescued. The wounded are not being tended. The dead are not being collected and buried.

The National Palace is in ruins.

Of course the disgusting comments of Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh -- which will not be repeated here nor will they be linked to -- are making all the rounds and causing the usual tumult. Apart from simple minded nastiness, I'm convinced that people like Robertson and Limbaugh vomit up these kinds of comments about other people's misfortunes because of the attention they bring to themselves, as if they'd hawked up a hairball and were very proud to show it off. While others are suffering and dying. To be blunt, they just can't stand the notion that others would get the attention they don't deserve. They hate it so much, they have to interrupt the commiseration going on to show off their vomit stains.

I will say this: in contrast to his right-wing yabbering bretheren, Hugh Hewitt has actually put some thought and concern into how to provide immediate help to injured Hatians: stabilize their condition there, then fly them here for treatment. And send money and help right now.

Yes, send whatever help you can to Haiti.

And work to end Haiti's Globalist Corporatist exploitation.

Another Boston Globe slideshow.

The Over Reliance on Mass Media

Periodically, the blogosphere gets its collective panties in a wad because of some awful thing Teh Media does or doesn't do, says or doesn't say, publishes or doesn't publish, presents or doesn't present, and for weeks on end, the keening and rending of garments, the gnashing of teeth and the covering with ashes doesn't stop.

It doesn't matter whether it's the Right or the Left Blogistan in eruption, Teh Media is the perpetual target and the fundamental culprit. Betrayal! And that's just one of the nicer epithets.

Let's be clear though. The issue is the Major Mass Media, the so-called MSM (MainStream Media), which has a somewhat elastic definition among its endless numbers of Blogospheric critics. All the major papers and all the cable teevee "news" and all the network teevee "news" and all the mass circulation magazines generally fall into the category of MSM, except for FOX News all the time and MSNBC sometimes, and the New York Times sometimes, depending on who wrote the story, and then there are certain exceptions for certain things that appear in other publications like Time or Newsweek, sometimes.... it all depends on what is being said and who is saying it, at what point in the News Cycle.

"MSM", though, is generally used as an epithet for every major news outlet you don't agree with. Depending. Sometimes you do agree with it. So then it's "Not MSM." Until it becomes "MSM" again.

Some book by some DC gossips has just been put in pre- release and all the demons of Anti-MSM Hell have hatched out of their swamps yet again. The book is (apparently) quintessential "MSM", because it consists (apparently) of nothing but unsourced gossip and vicious backbiting. Gee. And this then becomes a Major Story in all the press and media for days on end, the authors feted and celebrated and put on all the shows, given endless reams of free publicity, and criticized (along with their MSM enablers) endlessly.

The cycle repeats and repeats and repeats.

Usually based on a series of erroneous premises: 1) that the MSM is the only source of information Americans have; 2) the MSM has an obligation to report thoroughly and accurately; 3) investigative reporting is the principal function of news media; 4) it was Better Before.

All of these premises are demonstrably false.

1) Americans have access to a very wide range of information resources, many of them more easily accessible now than ever before, without let or hindrance of any kind (at least on the Internet), and the notion that these resources are not available -- while fundamental to the theories of media criticism that are commonplace in the Blogosphere -- is simply wrong. The Major Mass Media, of course, has a much stronger influence (most of the time) on the information and perceptions utilized by most people, but that does not mean that there aren't alternatives available.

A more cogent problem is the information overload that many Americans experience with hundreds of teevee channels, thousands of publications, and millions of Inernet sites providing information, some significant portion of it bogus. Add to the overload the consistent lack of critical thinking skills (deliberately driven out of public education during the last 30 years) among so many Americans, and you have a recipe for mass confusion. People believe what they believe based on what their friends, relations, community, and whoever they consider to be in Authority tell them is True and False. Individuals can't afford to do -- and don't have the skills to do -- their own investigative research and reporting, and they don't (for the most part) have the critical thinking skills to sort through a bunch of competing claims made by the crews of hucksters and flim-flam artists that constitute so much of the information overload the public experiences. So, they rely on "what they know." And that leads to deteriorating levels of curiosity, knowledge and understanding.

This occurs independently of the perfidy of the MSM, though the MSM is delighted to play along and take advantage of the general level of frustrated ignorance.

2) The MSM is under no obligation whatever to report accurately and thoroughly, and according to the Law Lords, it's not even obligated to report honestly. News Media in the United States is a business, or it is outright propaganda, and its primary obligation is to produce profits for its owners, or if not profits, then to spread an ideological/political message as far and wide as possible. This should be no mystery. It has always been so. The whole point of a "free press" is to make money for its owners and/or spread propaganda, preferably both simultaneously.

Some outlets, in this free-for-all media environment, will inevitably do the kind of journalism that critics of the MSM say they want the MSM to do (but sadly it doesn't, except sometimes when it does.) There simply is no obligation that the popular mass media must perform to a particular standard of journalism, or else. What they must perform to is a standard of profitability and/or propaganda. Or else.

3) Investigative reporting is not the principal function of the news media, never has been, never will be. It is a function of a somewhat specialized segment of the news media. Looking into mis- and malfeasance on the part of government and corporate actors and interests will be done by specialized sectors of the news media and by specialized reporters. It's never been any different. Sometimes the popular media does it -- especially if it will sell or will provide opportunities for spreading preferred propaganda -- but just as often if not more often it will be done by more specialized production and publication interests. And if investigations threaten the stability of the government or the primary corporate interests behind the government, most likely investigative reporting will not be done by the mass media, and efforts to do it in specialized niches will be interfered with or suppressed. Now and then, there will be exceptions (viz: Watergate), but they will be exceptions that prove the rule.

4) It was not Better Before. It simply wasn't. Go back in the archives. Pore through the musty shelves of ancient (or just dusty) periodicals and newspapers. Watch television news from the Golden Age. Listen to radio news broadcasts. Learn about the way journalism was typically practiced back then. Page through the "news" and witness the sensationalism, the racism, the sexism, the fluff and the nonsense that regularly appeared in the papers and in mass media magazines like Time and Life and the Saturday Evening Post. Listen to Father Coughlin and so many of the other wingnuts of the era whose radio broadcasts infested the airwaves. Bad as popular mass media was in those days, there were alternatives then as there are now. They were just much harder to get access to.

So no. It wasn't Better. And in some sense, the popular mass media can't be more to the liking of certain of its critics without losing the very popularity and mass appeal that characterizes it. It would no longer be the popular mass media, the despised and reviled MSM.

And yet, if the story isn't "plastered all over the MSM" -- as I often see claims that some outrage or other should be -- it's absence from the MSM seems to imply the story didn't happen or it's not important. The fact that the story may have been carried in alternative outlets that need to be featured rarely occurs to critics of the MSM. The only Important Media is Popular Mass Media.

How many times have I run into complaints that a story isn't being "covered" when it's repeatedly been featured on, say, "Democracy Now!" or in "The Nation" magazine, but there is no mention, by the critics, of either alternative outlet. It happens so often, it's routine. The failure of critics to mention or feature the alternative outlets where the stories can be found is not as bad as it once was, but it is still a remarkable failing on the "Left." The Right, on the other hand, while criticizing the Mass Media as much as the Left does, also provides constant reinforcement, mention, and interlinkages to their own alternative media. That's how, for example, FOX got to be where it is. How the "Weekly Standard" is taken seriously.

Too many "Progressives" are still locked in the notion that the only news worth their time is in the MSM, and they somehow have to "take it back" from the Conservatives who stole it from them.

The problem is those who call themselves "Progressives" these days never had the MSM in the first place; it's always been Conservative, business oriented, money-making/propaganda outlet, primarily serving the interests of wealth and power.

Always.

And then you have Chris Matthews.

"Shouting at the TeeVee"

Mad As Hell
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Network was made in 1976; plus ça change, eh? And yet, in 1976, Paddy Chayefsky, Sidney Lumet and Peter Finch radically suggested that you turn off your teevee, go to the window and SHOUT your rage at the way things are, let the rest of creation know that you're mad as hell and you're not going to take it any more. Not that you'll actually do anything beyond the SHOUT, but that's another issue.

Now today, of course, the theory is you should never turn off your teevee (or your computer, for that matter) 'cause you might miss something important that Chris Matthews has to say, and if you bother to do any shouting, then do it AT your teevee and your monitor. Brilliant!

Interactivity, don'tchaknow. Shout at your teevee, sign another online petition, call your representative in Congress assembled and give them a piece of your mind (you bet!), post another furious blog entry, send money to one of the Progressive causes, call it a day.

And repeat.

Endlessly.

This loop has been playing without let up since the Impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton, the event that triggered the creation of the Online Progressive Movement. "MoveON", eh?

But it never does move on. It goes around and around and around on a Mobius Strip. Endlessly. Repeating the same actions and reactions, (peacefully) protesting the same wrongs, petitioning for the same redress of the same grievances over and over and over again. The only way to sustain it, of course, is to endlessly recruit newcomers who never knew what was "wrong" or what they could "do."

There are changes to be sure, but they are not changes brought about by shouting at the teevee, nor do many of those shouting and protesting recognize the radical changes being instituted right in their faces.

The Bush Regime, for example, was the most radical and destructive imposition of authority by the White House and Washington, DC, without popular support, in our nation's history. The Bushevik radicalism proceeded with lightning like speed, transforming our economy into a kleptocracy and our government into an Autocracy in only eight years, shredding the Constitution and pissing on the remnants, while people continued shouting at their teevees and computer monitors.

To no effect.

And as long as your shouting and venting and ranting has no effect, what is there for the Powers That Be to worry about?

The lesson of the failure of the anti-Iraq War demonstrations in 2002 and 2003 should be stark and learned well. They were, after all, the largest physical movements of humanity in a cause the nation and the world had ever seen. Well, if they were seen. And here's the clue: the 2002 demonstrations weren't covered at all by the mass media and the 2003 demonstrations, though covered, were continuously mocked and denounced by the Powerful, at home and abroad, and declared "failures" (and CommiePlots, since their organizers were (at least ostensibly) the handful of actual Communists still in existence) despite their numbers -- which were never honestly reported anyway.

Tens of millions marched and carried signs all around the world. It had no effect at all.

But for all indifference of the Powerful to the mobilization of tens of millions against the Iraq War, their utter disdain for the pathetic shouting and petitioning of the masses that passes for "activism" today is even more instructive.

You see, the Powerful have determined through repeated experiment that the masses will do nothing they need pay attention to to thwart the plots and plans and designs of those who rule and rob us.

Nothing.

They will simply continue to shout at their teevees, sign online petitions, send money to "Progressive" causes, candidates and enterpreneurs, and wonder why things keep getting worse, why Congress doesn't pay any attention to them, and why the White House acts as if the Busheviks are still in charge.


They'll lose their jobs, their houses will be foreclosed, their retirement savings pilfered, they'll wind up in bankruptcy -- and they still won't be relieved of debt. This has already happened to millions upon millions of Americans, and millions upon millions more are in the pipeline for the same treatment.

And still they do nothing those in Power need pay any attention to.

Instead, a phony pseudo-populist "Movement" is channeling "resistance" energy into the same Corporatist Power the Teabagger "Movement" is ostensibly "resisting." Participants, for the most part, being none the wiser. Teabagging is a brilliant ploy by the Powers That Be to ensure that no popular movement can arise to interfere with or thwart them. The whole idea of "movement" and "resistance" has been co-opted right out of the gate.

The Teabaggers will have a General Strike, to boot, to protest "giving" the Wrong People "health care." They will probably have another one to protest "giving" old folks Social Security and Medicare.

Is this a great country, or what?

There is no "movement" on the Left, and given the co-option of the terminology and much of the action of protest and resistance by Rightist Teabagger mobs, there can't be one on the Left, not that there ever would have been anyway. So-called Progressives do not "progress." They are locked in place, kind of like that protest "march" in New York that was not allowed to actually... march but had to stay in place, each block of protesters separated from every other, surrounded by police, and forbidden to move in any direction -- defiance being met with overwhelming (and often horse mounted) force.

Under the circumstances, the apparent victory of the Globalists and Corporatists is a lock.

I've mentioned Democracy and specifically Social Democracy as the real and ultimately successful counter to Corporatist/Globalist Autocracy, but then the question is whether a Social Democracy can even begin to come into being in the context of Corporatist Victory. If we accept that Victory is real, then how can you get to Social Democracy?

In other words, can the victorious Corporatists be induced to sponsor Social Democratic alternatives?

According to my Magic 8 Ball, "Absolutely!"

Houston, we have a -- Real -- Problem

I've been kind of dancing around the problems our Law Lords are creating for us and the fundamental changes they're instituting in the Rights of individuals and our Form of Governance. While note has been made here and there of what's going down, there seems to be a great deal of denial or avoidance of what it really means for the future.

The idea being that by continuing to work at the faulty mechanisms of the Law, "we" can -- somehow -- reverse the tide. As was done by our sainted ancestors, so let it be done by ourselves and our progeny.

Uhhhh. I think not. Not this time.

We've been in full reverse when it comes to most issues of Rights and Liberties for some time, and there seems to be a ratchet-effect to prevent any significant restoration. Once a Right or Liberty is extinguished, it is not restorable, not in any sensible way. Given that habeas is the core legal Right from which all others are derived, its extinguishment and faulty "restoration" should be instructive.

But oddly, it's not.

So this is where we are: Chris Floyd has written an outstanding -- and horrifying -- examination of just what our Law Lords are telling us:

The president's war powers cannot be constrained by the international laws of war. Whatever the Leader (no points for translating this term into German) decides to do in the course of a war is thus rendered entirely "legal." He cannot be accused of international war crimes because such things do not apply to him.

With this ruling -- which is all of a piece with many more that have preceded it -- we are well and truly "past the leading edge of a new and frightening paradigm." What is most frightening, of course, is the obscene philosophy of machtpolitik -- the craven kowtowing to the demands of brute force -- that is embodied in Judge Brown's chilling words: "War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust."

Again, remember the context of this ruling. It deals with the Leader's power over foreign citizens in lands that the Leader's armies are occupying. The judicial "reasoning" expressed by Judge Brown could apply, without the slightest alteration, to the Nazi regime's various programs of mass killing and "indefinite detention" of "enemy" foreigners in occupied lands.

The "resettlement" of Eastern Europe -- in order to provide for the "national security" of the German people and the preservation of their "way of life" -- did indeed require a pathbreaking advance into a "new paradigm" on the part of the law. The exigencies and challenges of the war demanded, as Judge Brown would put it, that "new rules be written."

And what were those preceding rulings?

Let's have Chris speak to that as well:

[O]ur most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

And that's where we are, legally. It's not just a matter of tormenting the Foreign Devils and denying their human and legal rights. These rulings can literally apply to anyone at any time at the sole Pleasure and Command of the President-Emperor. There is no redress. There is not even the possibility of it.

This is the definition of tyranny, enshrined by our Law Lords.

Even during the darkest days of our Long National Nightmare under Bush and Cheney there was hope that their tyrannical designs would be thwarted, if not by the People, then by the Courts. And from time to time, the Courts would render hope-inducing opinions that seemed to at least temporarily thwart the more outrageous designs of our would be tyrants. Of course Bush and Cheney and their minions would find work-arounds, but the impression was left that in the end, the Courts would uphold the basic rights and liberties found in the Constitution and the various treaties to which the United States has long been party, but with these rulings -- with no doubt more to come -- the Courts are saying, "Ha ha, sucker! NO!"

Executive tyranny is being upheld and extended, casually, off-handedly. As if it were perfectly Normal.

And in fact, the whole point has long been to Normalize the Inconceivable.

These rulings, if allowed to stand -- and there is no reason to think they won't be -- constitute the "legal" dismantling of the Constitutional Rule of Law and the substitution of "Law" by Executive Fiat and Command. It is now Normalized that the Word of the Leader is itself "Law," by definition.

And with the exception of a few Internet cranks and civil liberties extremists, no one notices.

Do we ever have a Real Problem.

As always, the question is what do you do about it, especially when the Institutions relied on to correct such problems are themselves part of the problem.

And indeed, isn't it interesting that the Thundering Rightists have nothing to say about this at all. Why you'd almost think they were unconcerned about their dreaded Socialist Nemesis Fascist Obama "unpersoning" them.

Why would that be, I wonder...?

As Democrats Implode

The Triple Whammy of Senators Dorgan and Dodd and Colorado Governor Ritter announcing their retirements from the fray is followed by devastating poll numbers for Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln (no friend to Movement Progressives; down by double digits against any unknown Republican), Barbara Boxer potentially facing an uphill struggle, and on and on. A real shakeout among the Dems.

Of course they're fatalists. Que sera, sera and all that, and they really prefer to graciously accept any crackpot scheme the Rs want to come up with anyway. It's their role and their job in Corporatist governance. The Question is whether their Owners really want the Psychos back in power, and whether anyone is ready for another round of Neo-Conservatist Radicalism.

My bet right now is no. And so what we'll get when the Rs take back the Senate (which looks inevitable) and possibly take over the House as well, is a stall through the rest of the Obama Regime, with nothing actually getting done -- except for certain desired Neo-Liberal Incrementalist tweaks and adjustments to deregulation of finance.

My Prognosticator™ is even giving me a reading that suggests the Health Care Reform bill will never come out of Ping-Pong Limbo, will not be signed, will not become Law.

Anything that doesn't fit the Neo-Liberal program of consolidation of takings and stabilization of governance will be vetoed by the White House or will never emerge from the Sausage Factory. With the Psychos back in charge of the legislative branch, the very idea of "Democracy" will be further discredited in the minds of many. If "Democracy" gets you such a swift return to gridlock and worse, what's the point? Why not go with Autocracy? It works better. It looks better. What's to worry?

It was interesting to see how the Democrats behaved when they achieved their goal of control of both houses of Congress and the White House -- and then a 60 vote majority in the Senate on top of it. They essentially split into two parties, one of which was a simulacrum of the Republicans c. 1959. In other words, Democrats formed the Opposition Party to their own selves. I'd never seen anything like it in politics. The Republican Party itself essentially withdrew into sulking and clowning and sniping from the sidelines, while Democrats did political battle with themselves constantly.

This has been going on for a year, and it's been extraordinarily debilitating. That the Democrats could actually split this way and have such an open struggle within their own caucus for the entire time they have been in power, act as if they were their own Opposition Party, and further, have essentially continued to behave as they did when they were the "Opposition" to Republicans, by graciously agreeing to whatever crackpot scheme the Conserva-Dems/quasi-Republicans wanted -- is really stunning when you think about it.

Which I haven't even wanted to do until recently.

This is merely one of the many indications that our politics is really and truly broken.

I have no love for the Senate. I think it should be abolished or turned into a parking-place for honored and garrulous old farts with nothing else to do like the House of Lords, but we've seen, over and over again, that the Senate becomes unstable when Dems are in charge of it. The House seems to be institutionally more stable, but even there, the Dems, at odds with themselves, can barely achieve a voting majority for significant legislation.

Given the astonishing levels of corruption in both houses, on full and sickening view throughout the HCR "debate", a case can and should be made than neither house represents the People in any case, and the whole sorry show should just be shut down.

We're left with Autocracy, again. Since the People really have no functioning Representative Government, only the appearance of one, it becomes the Job of the Autocrat to be both the embodiment of the State and the People's (Sole) Representative. That was a role that Bush often asserted for himself, especially with regard to Civil Liberties ("I will protect you and defend your liberties!..."), and Obama seems to be able to adopt the same theory of Autocracy himself, though he seems to be reluctant to employ it openly, preferring to let the let the Legislative bodies grind themselves to dust and ensure their perpetual irrelevance.

What happened to cause the functional end of the Roman Republic comes to mind.

One wonders: Can Social Democracy even begin to address this mess?

Status Quo

Incrementalism preserves the status quo while Incrementalists are working (lazily or diligently, it doesn't matter) to "improve" some aspect of the situation. Incrementalists don't want any sudden or significant change in the methods of operations or the institutions through which they work, nor do they want their "improvements" to be too sudden or significant. This is the whole theory of "baby-steps." You build a little bit here and a little bit there, a teensy bit at a time, and very gradually, things get better.

Meanwhile, all that is rotten and wrong is preserved from precipitous harm or decline (and is still able to make advances, incrementally, as well) and general stability of systems is maintained.

Preserving the status quo is essential for Incrementalism to function. Radical change is anathema to Incrementalists...

Except...

The Busheviks were truly radical, and what they wanted to do from the outset was change the status quo; in other words to permanently redirect the interest and energy of the systems they were in charge of. They were setting a new direction for those systems, not building on previous minor changes or adjustments. In some respects they were Revolutionary (or Counter-Revolutionary) in that they were intent on changing the systems themselves, overthrowing the remnants of what went before and putting in place something else again (widely characterized as the Unitary Executive, but known in previous eras as a Tyrant/Dictator/Autocrat).

They were largely successful.

They accomplished their task very quickly (of course, given the boost of the 9/11 attacks, the speed of their transformation was accelerated); there was little or no effective resistance inside the government, and there was none at all -- that they felt any need to pay attention to -- outside it, in the streets, in the media, or railing on the Internets.

They simply bulled their way through.

Even when voters seemed to reject their radicalism (ie: in the 2006 congressional elections) the radicals still bulled their way. The opposition was no opposition at all when enough of them could always be found to collaborate with the radicals to form a working majority in the increasingly corrupt and discredited congress. It was literally breathtaking.

And now from the sidelines, Radical-In-Chief Cheney and his daughter continually snipe at any backsliding from the radicalism of the Busheviks, essentially asserting the permanence of the radical changes they made to the status quo in their brief time at the helm. And they get away with it.

Their sniping -- while sometimes countered with White House snark -- usually seems to work. Backsliding is reversed, and the radical Bushevik status quo is preserved or extended.

Progressives are disillusioned again. But they can't seem to do anything about it.

Partly, I argue, it's because they don't want to. Not really. With Incrementalism at their core, they do not seek or want radical change, and they would never attempt radical change on their own. If someone else does it, that's another thing altogether, and if radical change comes through no effort of their own, and it significantly alters the status quo, then these Incrementalist-Progressives will support the New Status Quo while continuing on their chosen path of Incremental, bit-by-bit, baby-step "improvements" to whatever the New Status Quo might be.

That's where we are right now.

And it's discombobulating a lot of folks who are still on a pre-Radical path of Incremental change. They're still trying to work through institutions that have atrophied or been destroyed, using systems that have been fundamentally corrupted.

It's disturbing to see the dysfunction of the Congress, for example, in such detail as we've seen throughout the Health Care Reform psycho-drama. The House is barely able to come up with something that at best gives only a hat tip to the Public Interest; the Senate is incapable of even that. And there is a very strong suspicion that the White House has been orchestrating all of it in a cynical move to further consolidate the Neo-Liberal side of the Corporatist endeavor that is Our Government.

Of course the Courts were long ago corrupted and folded into the Autocracy; after all, it was a seriously flawed Supreme Court decision that installed the Busheviks in power in the first place and which then sustained most of their most radical initiatives, as it has most recently done, tellingly, by refusing to review a lower court ruling that sustains the power of the President (as Autocrat) to declare anyone at all at any time an "enemy combatant", to strip them of any and all human rights, to order or allow their torture (which the subject should "expect") and to deny them any redress of grievance whatsoever. This is Law? Well, yes, yes it is.

That's now the Status Quo.

Incrementalists by their nature will support it -- while attempting gradual mitigations. That's what the Obama administration is doing, forthrightly, without apology. It is "change" of a sort, in that the Obama administration isn't the Radical Institution Overthrowing Counter Revolutionary endeavor the Bushevik Regime was, but it certainly isn't the kind of "change" that some people (even many Incrementalists) were anticipating.

No, they'd become used to the radicalism of Bushevism, and they instinctively accepted that Radical Change had become the New Status Quo, and they were expecting it to continue, on a different path, with the ascension of the Good Emperor, Barack Hussein Obama.

But no. That's not what happened at all. So there is plenty of keening and rending of garments over Barack's betrayal. But he's not "betraying" anything but the illusions of those who assumed he would continue radical operations.

No, Barack the Good is an Incrementalist, and the "change" he was marketing so well was the change from Radicalism to Incrementalism.

The systems the radicals put in place are now the Status Quo -- which was the Busheviks' intention, after all. Those systems are now being subject to gradual, incremental mitigations and adjustments.

THAT'S the "Change You Can Believe In."

Is that really so hard to understand?

[Note: I've been using the portrait of Ahkenaten as an avatar of Obama. I think there's a physical resemblance. But more importantly, it is the notion of Radical Change that seemed to accompany Obama throughout the campaign that Ahkenaten symbolizes that I wanted to convey. Given the upshot of this post, however, Ahkenaten may no longer be the historical figure I should use. I may have to go back to Hoover.]

OT: Two Degrees of Separation?

The Kevin Bacon Movie Club from Kevin Bacon

We were playing the Kevin Bacon Game over the Holidays, and while it can be hours of fun to connect everyone in Hollywood to KB, I idly mentioned I might be only a few degrees of separation from KB myself.

Well. How so?

I said I thought it was probably two degrees... I worked on several productions with Robin Williams back when we were all a lot younger. He worked with a lot of people who of course can be connected with Kevin Bacon, but I didn't think he ever worked with KB himself.

But then I recalled Robin Williams was in a movie with Bob Balaban (Jakob the Liar) and I was in a movie with Bob Balaban (Strawberry Statement) and Bob Balaban was in a movie (End of the Line) with Kevin Bacon. One degree, eh?


[Bob Balaban as Elliot in The Strawberry Statement]

But turns out my Bacon Number is 2, Bob Balaban is 1, and KB himself is 0. Robin Williams' Bacon Number is also 2.

So is this Two Degrees of Separation or only One -- since there is only one actor between Robin Williams or myself and Kevin Bacon?

I am so confused.



[One of many appearances by Che's poster in The Strawberry Statement)

Confiscatory Taxation

Digby is fretting -- again -- that Pete Peterson, et al, are gearing up for a major marketing push for a Commission to tackle Entitlements and the Deficit.

They're planting "news" articles in places like the Washington Post, they're getting on the teevee constantly, they're buying ads, and on and on and on, wailing and gnashing their teeth at the appalling level of the deficit (in these Recessionary Times, too!) and targeting the Entitlements of Social Security and Medicare for a major haircut if not outright elimination.

If we don't take on the Entitlements, runs their argument, and curb their unfunded liabilities, our grandchildren will be paying for our profligacy, and no one wants that. Do they?

Well, how about that, same as it ever was, we've fallen right back into 1934, only this time around, Hoover won a second term. Lucky us.

Of course, the real issue is simple: Peterson and his billionaire buddies (and their heirs) don't want to be on the hook for the taxes required to cover those unfunded liabilities, liabilities that are only unfunded because he and his ilk have benefited from massive tax cuts over the years (while ordinary workers' payroll taxes doubled) and now that the bill is coming due, they don't want to pay.

The specific remedy is to tax the holy shit out of these people, confiscatory taxation on incomes over a certain level, 100% tax on high value estates, tax all hedge fund transactions, indeed, tax all stock market transactions. Tax the movement of manufacturing and jobs overseas. Tax credit default swaps and all the other 'instruments' by which the Masters of the Universe rule. Take it all.

Every damned dime of ill-gotten gain for the last 30 years has been scammed and stolen from We, the People. Get it back.

No quarter. None. Take everything they have and everything they've hidden. Tax the damned ads they run. These people have had a free ride for decades, they are bloated with so much gold they can hardly move.

Don't fret. Get even.

Social Democrats vs "Progressives"

Social Democracy functions as a political means to control (we may call it "regulate") otherwise out-of-control and tending-toward-corporate Capitalism. It does not destroy Capitalism or replace Capitalism. Social Democracy curbs the worst tendencies of Capitalism, and it -- generally -- prevents Corporatism from developing and flourishing.

The premise of Social Democracy is that the People are ultimately sovereign over all issues, political, social, and economic, and through their employment of strong Democratic institutions, they are able to set and direct political, social, and economic policies in their mutual interest. Democracy doesn't always get things right, but if properly understood and employed, it can protect the weak from the depredations of the strong, it can mitigate the abuses inherent in unfettered Capitalism, and it can ensure fair and equitable economic and social as well as narrow legal justice.

"Progressives" in this country at least are considered throw-back Conservatives in most of the rest of the world, and what passes for conservatism (which is really straight-out Corporatism) in this country is despised as basic, stripped-down Fascism elsewhere. Our Conservatives are akin to the traditional ruling juntas in Latin America -- a phase of their history that most of Latin America (Honduras excepted) is proud to have put behind them.

"Progressives" in this country are highly influenced by Libertarianism, and many so-called "Progressives" are in fact opportunistic Libertarians. Libertarianism tends to be a fringe right-wing political/social/economic cult rather than a functioning political/social/economic movement. It's at least partially derived from notions of the origins of the United States -- with many diversions over the utility of the Revolution (or was it "really" a Revolution?), arguments over the meaning of the Constitution, sometimes advocacy of a revival of the pre-Constitutional confederacy, etc.

It's been said that Libertarians are Republicans who smoke dope and have lots of sex; "Progressives" could be said to be Libertarians who have a rudimentary social conscience.

Social Democrats are Mutualists (yes, yes, I know, they were "collectivists" back in the day, but those days are gone, and the structure of Marxism as it used to be implemented ain't coming back.) "Progressives," on the other hand, are fierce Individualists, each one an island unto itself. Social Democrats consolidate and agree -- and move forward; "Progressives" split off, atomize, disagree, argue endlessly -- and stand still. Not even incremental progress -- except as individuals accumulating notice, power and treasure unto themselves.

They are not "Leftists." Not even remotely.

We see how anti-Leftist they are in the current antipathy toward the Health Care Reform bills now being finalized. They are, of course, not opposed to Health Care Reform per se, they're just opposed to paying for it, specifically they are opposed to being compelled to pay for insurance they are convinced they will never use, or if they do use it, they won't receive the coverage or treatment they believe is their due. And they are deeply resentful of having to pay anything toward anyone else's health care expenses, such as by being taxed to support the subsidies that are supposed to go to less-well-off Americans to make this "junk insurance" they will be forced to buy "affordable."

They want a Public Option, they say. Something that is never quite defined -- much like "Progressive" itself -- but which is an idea marketed as a government operated alternative to the private insurance market. But what, exactly, that is supposed to be is anybody's guess.

Social Democrats, real Leftists, don't bother with the bullshit of exchanges and markets and options and choices and menus and whatnot when it comes to Health Care Reform. They just go right to the point: what used to be called "Single Payer" (which ultimately was gibberish except to initiates) but is now known as "Medicare for All" -- which people understand.

All the "Progressive" argument over the Public Option is just argument for its own sake. It won't get you where you need to be on the one hand, and it's not going to happen anyway on the other. It never was. It was and is a Chimera.

And yet "Progressives" are obsessed with it.

They drop-kicked any interest in Single Payer/Medicare for All before the contest even began because they were told, and they believed, that there was no way to move a Medicare for All program through the Congress, and the Public Option was the preferred alternative of the Powers That Be. Only it turned out not to be true. The PTB wanted nothing to do with a Public Option -- except, perhaps, as a shiny object to keep the "Progressives" entertained.

Now that the Public Option has failed utterly -- in fact, everything the "Progressives" wanted and advocated for has been stripped from the Senate bill -- some "Progressives" (calling themselves Principled!) are tentatively getting on the Medicare For All bandwagon, saying that's what they always wanted anyway, they did, really, yep.

Meanwhile hurling barrages of insults at all and sundry for questioning their motives and their judgement and hooking up with the most reactionary elements in the political firmament to "resist" whatever is coming out of the Sausage Factory.

OK, then.

Social Democrats have always been fully in favor of a Single Payer/Medicare For All health care reform, modeled on the health care programs in Europe -- where Social Democrats got this thing done ages ago -- and have never wavered, never had any interest in the shiny objects the Corporatists and HCI lobbyists have been tossing out like candy.

It doesn't matter whether you can "move" the legislation to implement it through Congress, at least not in the short term. You start with the principles you believe in and you stick to them, you do not waver or advocate for an alternative (and suppress what you "really" want) in the hopes of getting where you "really" want to be in the bye and bye.

You may have to get where you want to be piecemeal, which is why a Social Democrat may be able to accept what comes out of the Sausage Factory -- without a Public Option, and without supporting the bill.

Why? Simple: as odious as the straight out give aways to the Industry are, Bernie Sanders (a Social Democrat) has managed to put in a provision for the establishment and support of thousands, ultimately more than ten thousand, public health clinics open to all comers, insured or not insured, to provide routine health care to the to those who currently cannot get it.

THAT is a STEP toward correcting the flaws in our health care delivery system, expanding access to CARE -- which is the fundamental problem -- which could lead to the establishment of a rational nationwide health care system serving all Americans.

Hm. What a concept.

The mind boggles.

Yes, the giveaways to Industry are odious. The individual mandate to buy "crap insurance" -- if that's what the mandate actually turns out to be -- may indeed spark legitimate resistance. If the reform that passes causes a sudden widespread reduction of coverage at a significantly higher price to the masses, there will be a strong reaction.

On the other hand, if it provides access to care that was otherwise unavailable, if it provides some mechanism to curb the extraordinary inflation in health care costs (a mechanism not discernible from this vantage point), and if it provides some tangible benefit to substantial numbers of Americans then the reaction won't be any worse than that to Medicare Part D.

Which is what I think our Corporatist-serving government is angling for.

We'll see.

And then we have the whole issue of transforming the Corporatist-serving government into one that serves The People.

A whole nother kettle of fish.

On the Necessity of Social Democracy

First, that the workers of all nations share more in economic interest with each other, than the workers of any nation share with the political and economic elites of their own nation.

Second, that governments derive all just power from the consent of the governed. That governments exist for the benefit of the governed and not the reverse. Therefore, it is the duty of the governed to alter and abolish all forms of domination, political, economic, cultural, and religious, that would seek to deny the governed full and complete access to the power, which belongs to them alone.

Third, that war is, by its very nature, a crime against humanity. Occasionally, it may be necessary for a people to defend itself from attack. This is never an excuse for the imperial acquisition of resources, territory, or an attempt to establish military or ideological hegemony.

Fourth, that the rights of humanity as set forth in the United Nations International Declaration of Human Rights, may never be transgressed by any party no matter how imperiled or aggrieved that party believes itself to be. Torture, the deliberate targeting of non-combatants with anti-personnel devices (regardless of whether the bomb falls from fast moving airplanes, or is carried in backpacks aboard public transportation), or the deliberate imprisonment, starvation, or displacement of massive numbers of people for political gain is now and will forever be WRONG!

Fifth, that human kind has a right to be free from persecution because of ethnicity, gender, age, religious preference, sexual orientation. The peoples of the earth are entitled to national self determination within political boundaries that respect for the sovernity of others and real concerns for self protection shall allow.

Sixth, we social democrats will never be cheerleaders for the slaughter of any group of people no matter what the ideology of those pursuing the massacre may be. We will never apologize for tyranny or injustice no matter what grave exigencies the tyrant shall claim.

Seventh, while people are hungry, homeless, poorly clothed, and without the basic necessities of life, there can be no democratic process.

Eighth, people have an inherent right to worship God or participate in spirituality as their conscience dictates. The state must never be the arbiter of religious thought. Instead, it is the people who must instruct the government as to spiritual and moral precepts. Therefore, it is the right of each person to disagree vehemently with others in their society upon the nature of what is moral. A democratic government cannot take sides. This does not mean that the individual members of an elected government cannot and should not be guided by moral precepts No one seeking election in a democratic society should be asked to divest him or herself of whatever spiritual and moral precepts he or she holds.

Ninth, while governments have a right to maintain the security of their borders, they do not have the right to harass those forced to cross a particular national frontier in order to find gainful employment or shelter from the ravages of war, famine or natural disaster.

Tenth, human beings are the stewards of the earth, not its masters. No generation has a right to pass on a polluted or degraded planet to the generations that follow.

Eleventh, that in any prosecution brought for any crime a defendant shall have a right to be heard by himself, and/or through counsel and shall have an absolute right to examine all evidence, to face all accusers, to call all material witnesses and to make whatever representations to the tribunal which he or she faces, which may seem to the defendant to be exculpatory. The judiciary of a democratic nation must be independent and separate from that nation's legislative and executive branches of government.

Twelfth, there is only one cure for the ills of democracy; more democracy. Free people will build a wondrous and diverse culture that will express what it is to be truly human.

This is a set of 12 principles that forms the core of Social Democratic political thinking. There's nothing terribly controversial about most of these principles; in fact, most Americans would probably agree with these simple points.

So why are so many blogospheric lights casting their lot with libertarians and right wing wackos?

In the New Year, we should re-dedicate ourselves to the principles of Social Democracy, and resist the temptation to sacrifice Social Democratic principles for the potential of momentary political gain.

Will the "Progressive" Blogosphere Grow Up or Implode?

Hard to say. Right now, things are in flux, and that's always an interesting period, but it is froughtful as well.

Jane-as-Kali seems to have had her meds adjusted, or maybe she wasn't all that interested in HEADS! after all. There is still her smoldering animosity toward Those Who Have Crossed-and-Thwarted Her (Rahm, Hadassah, Holy Joe, among others), but since her alliance of convenience with her Toad Prince Grover Norquist garnered so much attention, she's almost calmed down, and can sometimes be as sweetly rational as ever.

Toad Grover, it seems to me, is looking for relevance in this Neo-Liberal phase, but he's always had a tendency to hook up with anyone who would show him due deference and play his Let's Punch Some Hippies and Destroy the Democrats game. It's just the way he is.

Attendance at the Church of Jane seems to have dropped off precipitously after an initial burst of clamor that attracted hordes of Libertarian zombies. They may still be there, but if they are, they are keeping a low profile. Most of the chatter is by Jane herself, a small core of writer/acolytes, and a couple of dozen regular commenter, some of whom seem to be satisfied with saying "Jane's nuts" every now and then.

But the argument is actually getting much better. Cassiodorus has a knock-out analysis of the Neo-Liberal programs and policies that are being adopted and pushed by the Obama regime, On Anti-Corporatism And Its Critique that should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand what's going on beyond the intercine struggle and get some hints on what to do about it. David Dayen points out that "personalities" have overwhelmed the consideration of policy, The Fannie/Freddie Uncapping: More Important Than the Coalition Questioning It, and Jane Herself gets into a consideration of a defense of Libertarians, Libertarians on Establishment Demonization, all of which tends to add some yeast to the dough and actually start bending the curve (my, how certain phrases just trip off the tongue!) of OUTRAGE!!!!™ back toward what's really gone wrong and what to do about it.

Over at dKos, high dudgeon at Jane's misbehavior still reigns, now with calls to ban her crazy ass and those of her paid minions. I won't link, because to my mind it doesn't further the discussion of what's wrong and what to do about it as it is still based on personality. Oh, and the dKos tactic of banning anyone who strays off the reservation.

What's most interesting to me about all this ferment is that there was no equivalent ferment -- together with calls to overthrow the Powers That Be (let alone identifying what those Powers really were) -- during the Bush years. any hint of such a thing was immediately suppressed, shushed and shouted down. You simply could not talk in crypto-Revolutionary terms with regard to Bushevism in the Lefty Blogosphere. It was considered Rude, but more to the point, it was considered Dangerous. The Stasi was watching everything, and the Gulags were waiting.

Now? Not so much.

Is it because the Regime has changed, or is it something else? Why would crypto-Revolutionary cant and rhetoric be suppressed during the Neo-Conservative phase of Corporate Rule, but be released in full cry during the Neo-Liberal phase? Could it be because there was an unspoken "agreeance" among some of the prominent Lefty Bloggers that the Bushevik Program was pretty much OK with them? And could the hyped up chants of "Revolution Now!" actually be trying to set the conditions to lead back to Bushevism?

Is there really a nostalgia for Bushevism?

The constant through this, now being discussed in public, is the libertarian influence on what passes for "Progressive" these days. Libertarians certainly had their issues with Bushevism, but the overarching Republican themes of Lower Taxes and Less Government (whether or not they were instituted) are very appealing to the Libertarian soul. On the other hand, the more forthright, "You gotta pay for this shit, and follow the rules too," coming from Team Obama is aggravating to Libertarians, sufficiently, apparently, to drag them from their general argumentation to specific calls to Overthrow the System and start anew.

They also tend to think that Bush was strong and to be feared, while Obama is weak and to be undermined (like Clinton or Carter dontchaknow).

Anti-Corporatism is the New Thing these days, discussed openly, though by no means clearly understood. Opposing Corporatism is one thing, what to do about it is something else again, and apart from the Revolutionary act of casting a vote "we" don't have (ie: to stop HCR), there is no common agreement among "Progressives" about what to actually do to thwart the Masters of the Universe who Rule Us with An Iron Rod.

I've said elsewhere that Democracy -- specifically Social Democracy, but other forms of mutual interest->common action work, too -- is Kryptonite to Corporatism and its continual cycling between Neo-Conservative and Neo-Liberal phases of operations, can control and ultimately defeat it utterly. And how very interesting it is that you will not find discussions of Social Democracy or even mention of it in all the Anti-Corporatist yammering going on in the Lefty Blogosphere.

It's the absence of any real Leftism from the Lefty Blogosphere that acts to maintain the status quo -- rule by Imperial Autocracy on behalf of Corporate interests.

Funny how that works.

So here's Jane shaking things up, but doing so in a manner that will, if successful, lead to a restoration of (and who knows, perhaps the perfection of!) Bushevism and all its psychotic Neo-Conservatism.

Jeebus, batten down. We may be in for a real bumpy ride in the New Year.