November 7, 2008: A Splendid Wreck, Not A Sailor in the Lot, Wretched Exhibition of Seamanship.

This would not be the last time a “Maverick” would run amok, wreaking havoc in it's wake. A dozen years later another Nor'easter would come up the coast out of Florida, touch the Carolinas, take Virginia and sweep clean the landscape as it pressed down hard on New England. When the sun rose on November 5, Guy Fawkes Day in Britain, not a Goppite was to be found. Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut became the last of the New England pachyderms in the House of Representatives to go the way of the pterodactyl. Now no Republican representation in the House is to be found anywhere in New England. In the Senate Republicans have only the two seats from Maine. For the Republican party fertile ground, once home to the Lodge's and the Sunnunu's, Governors Sergeant, King and Romney, Senators Edmond Brooke and Warren Rudman, has been laid waste by two land-lubbers in the persons of McCain and Palin who had seized the helm of the good ship “Maverick”,cut her loose from her moorings, and proceeded to run her hard aground.

It was a splendid wreck, but a wreck nonetheless, reminiscent of the days of Katrina when McCain then partied down with 'Ol Two-Cows while the city drown. One could sense as the storm bore down on the country that nothing good, from the GOP's point of view, could come of this. A generation ago another senator from Arizona would happily wage war on both New England and the Middle Class producing similar results for the Grand Old Party. McCain, now sitting in Goldwater's seat, came north avowing to finish the job. A certain giddiness took over the campaign as it lurched from issue to issue, pseudo-issue to pseudo-issue, and smear to smear, seeking to right itself in the face of the howling winds. The good Marshall, unfamiliar with either storm or sea, took to the ship-to-shore radio and announced that “we've got them just where we want them, c'mon everybody let's party!”, as if by whistling past Davey Jones'Locker he could keep the inevitable at bay. Palin, for her part, went on a spending spree like a drunken sailor, becoming what one McCain aide was later quoted as saying “Wasilla Hillbillies plundering every Neiman Marcus store across America”. It was a wretched exhibition of seamanship demonstrating that there was not a sailor in the lot.

Indeed there was not a sailor in the lot. McCain's campaign had early on been taken over by lobbyists. In fact John McCain himself, since the days of the "Keating 5", had been nothing but a shill for the K-street gang. His campaign, accordingly, was a wholly owned subsidiary of the Washington lobbyists. Every major policy, advisory, or staff position was held by a lobbyist, right down to former Senator Phil Gram his economic advisor and author of deregulation turned lobbyist for the very industries he deregulated; and right down to his foreign policy advisor who was a paid lobbyist for the nation of Georgia. Lobbyists certainly have a role to play. At best they are a vast source of information, at worst a vast source of disinformation and corrupting campaign contributions. They can help craft legislation in ways that certainly protect industry, but can also move to eviscerate laws by unduly influencing the rule-making process through which enabling legislation is implemented. Until McCain recruited them 'en masse' to run his campaign, however, they have not heretofore played serious roles in political campaign organization. The consequences were telling. Lobbyists, by their very nature, influence the political process through making political contributions and pigeonholing. This is best known as 'inside the beltway' politics, the kind of politics often accused of thwarting the 'will of the people', but effective nonetheless. Campaigning, on the other hand, is 'retail' politics, in which the nominal leaders of the country stump the nation in an effort to persuade and convince. This takes an entirely different approach, best perhaps demonstrated by advertising consultants and pollsters, and requires an entirely different set of skills. The 'Forked-Tongue Express' while consulting pols and pollsters nevertheless was, root and branch, a creature of K-Street. Accordingly political decisions, the choice of Sarah Palin for Vice President a perfect example, was based on a series of erroneous assumptions that only complete amateurs could have made. For instance women, it was held, would readily move from Hillary to Sarah despite having to cross party lines and leaping across a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon on issues such as abortion, child care, health care, social spending, and education. Similarly the steadfast refusal of the 'Fork-Tongued Express' to address the screaming needs of a middle class writhing in economic pain, a failure even to utter the words 'middle class', belied a tone deafness that can only be attributed to a band of complete amateurs. No, there was not a sailor in the lot, a campaign that had all the earmarks of a “Three Stooges” comedy, right down to calling the middle class a bunch of 'whiners', threatening, if successful, to transform the ship of state once again into a “Ship of Fools.”

The nation would have no more of it. Late this week the Goppites met in Virginia to discuss the future of the Republican Party. The first order of business was to gather up the remains of the good ship “Maverick” and put her to the torch.

November 6, 2008: Big Wind at Nantucket, A Hurricane Boat Wreck, Misadventures of 'Maverick'

By L.F. Hamp

I woke with a start as the boat snubbed-up taut to her mooring on a strong gust of wind.
A pink glow of early morning lit the cabin. The 'ship's cat' stared down at me balefully from his perch in a mesh hammock full of towels and T-shirts swinging gently above the bunk. (He kept a rough-weather nest there.) Nor'easterly winds carried a cacophony of 'ting-ting-a-ling-tunk-tunk-ting-a-ling's as running-rigging slapped a thousand metallic masts, booms, and yards.

I sat up- in my bunk and gazed through the spray-spattered windscreen. The harbor was choppy, the morning sky clear. Dark against the brightening sky a multitude of hulls and masts rocked, rolled, and swayed ceaselessly to and fro. I swung my feet over the side of my bunk and the cat jumped from the hammock, purring like a small engine for attention and breakfast. I turned on the FM radio and tuned to a station on the next island west, Martha's Vineyard then brewed a pot of coffee while I fed the cat and dressed.

I stepped out into the well deck with a strong cup of coffee and glanced around the harbor. In mid-August, Nantucket was crammed with visitors, many of them the 'yachting crowd'. Several hundred boats filled every available space at moorings and the town's many docks and piers. Some were tiny day-sailers, some as long as 80 feet. About 30 of them were, like mine, home to a small community of 'live-aboards' who owned moorings in the harbor for summer, rented space at commercial docks in winter. It was a cooperative community of tradesmen, artists, writers and vagabonds.

I bought my 30 foot wooden Pacemaker for $3500, then put hundreds of hours into making her as pretty an old boat as you'd see in the harbor. She was built in New Jersey in 1963, of good American oak, powered by a Barr Marine flat-head six-cylinder engine, with one cylinder sealed off. On five cylinders she ran smoothly and purred like a cat. I often cruised to Martha's, Wood's Hole, sometimes as far as Block Island, with never a minute's trouble.

Nantucket's shellfish warden had been her first owner. He'd scalloped and fished in her, taken good care of her. My improvements had all been cosmetic. I refinished the cabin woodwork, painted the hull black with a red waterline. Her decks were battleship gray, the cabin outside sky blue, with a white flying bridge. I always flew a Michigan flag, and national colors. For holidays I added a Revolutionary War pine tree and rattlesnake flag, with the motto “Don't tread on me” embroidered at bottom of the field. Her appearance was 'shipshape and Bristol fashion', a smart vessel in every respect.

It was August 19, 1986. Across harbor at the Coast Guard station a gale warning was displayed. The vineyard radio station warned of a strong storm creeping up the coast with high winds, high seas, and heavy rain. The cat entertained himself racing around the gun'ls (he often raced so fast he'd fly off into the harbor, then swim back to the boat and claw his way up to the deck). I walked around the boat, checked tension on the mooring cable, stowed everything loose in the cabin, then climbed down into the dinghy for a hundred yard pull to Town Pier.

A former Coast Guardsman with more than three years sea duty, I'd seen my share of terrific storms at sea. I served in Coast Guard ice-breaker “Westwind”, and ice-breaker/buoy-tender “Clover” in the North Atlantic, Denmark Straight, North Pacific, Bering and Barents Seas, Gulf of Alaska, and Arctic Ocean; as far north as Thule, Greenland in the eastern ocean, in the pacific to places well north of Point Hope, Alaska.

Approaching Town Pier, I stepped out onto the camel carrying my bow line, climbed a ladder to the pier, and secured the boat. I had some errands to run, and needed coffee, other staples. By 11 o'clock it was raining hard, blowing harder. At noon the Coast Guard hoisted a hurricane warning, and about one P.M., I headed back to secure the boat and settle in for the storm. Rowing back to the boat, though just a hundred yards away, was an adventure in itself. My dinghy was only eight feet long, flat-bottomed, and relatively fragile. Waves in the harbor were running 5-6 feet, spindrift and raindrops were blowing horizontally. I was wet and cold by the time I reached home.

I climbed over the gun'ls, and pulled the boat up after me. I flipped it ujpside-down in the well deck and secured it to ring bolts I'd installed earlier in the summer after losing a dinghy to a spring storm. Boats in the harbor were thrashing like frightened horses. I ran out another 12 or 15 feet of cable, which eased her bucking, then went inside for some warmth and dry clothing.

By evening the harbor was wild. Half-a-dozen boats, unmanned and broken from moorings, had already zipped past me, stern first, toward the beach. They moved faster than they'd ever moved forward under sail or power. I wasn't concerned about my mooring. I'd safely ridden-out 80 knot winds a month earlier on my 400 pound mushroom anchor. After the spring blow I'd chained a 300 pound cast iron radiator 15 feet from the anchor stock to keep it on its side. Nantucket harbor is notoriously poor holding ground in a North-East blow. When your boat is your home, you cannot be too safe.

I turned on the ship-to-shore and FM radios, grabbed the cat, wedged myself into the bunk with a thermos of coffee, and went to work on C.S. Forester novel (Payment Deferred) I was re-writing for a stage production.

By 10 P.M. I'd given up on Forester. The boat, inside, was a shambles, and wind gusts were well over 100 knots. The town was dark—the power plant knocked off-line. The hundred yards between me and Town Pier looked wide as the Atlantic. A tremendous gust of wind, the sound of splintering wood, and a loud crash brought me off my bunk and out into the well deck. Half my dinghy was trailing over the stern, held by a piece of 21 thread line. The other half was gone. One ring bolt had been ripped from the deck. I cut the line with my pocket knife and the wreckage disappeared. Soaking wet, and half-blinded by the stinging wind-driven rain, I returned to the cabin and my bunk.

The ship-to-shore radio crackled. Somewhere in the harbor a group of drunken yachtsmen were calling. “This is the yacht “Maverick”, does anyone want to party?” And, moments later, “It's hurricane party time on the yacht “Maverick” c'mon out'n join the fun.” It takes all kinds.

By midnight, when the Vineyard radio station went off the air, I'd been pitched from the bunk a couple of times. The deck was covered with odds and ends of daily life, and awash with water seeping in around the door and side windows. Books, cassette tapes, broken cups and plates, rolled, crunched, and rolled again. The howling wind, the darkened town, made me feel as alone as I'm ever going to feel.

Rising from the bunk, I stumbled to the radio and searched for a coastal radio station to keep up to date on the storm. As I turned the dial, AI glanced through the windscreen. A blank. I turned toward my bunk, then, quickly turned and looked again. “What's that,” I said to myself, and reached for the wiper switch. Raindrops the size of .38 bullets were driving horizontally, but a hundred yards out, and coming like a freight train, were a half-a-dozen tangled boats. Two of them were huge.

“Jesus!” I grabbed my axe. Out the door without a life jacket, up on the gun'l, I quickly moved forward. I was half-way to the anchor cable when they struck, and nearly went over the side. Recovering balance, and crawling forward, I cut the cable with one swing of the axe.

Back in the cabin I buckled into a life jacket, then turned and hit the ignition. Nothing. Looking around the cabin I noticed all the windows to starboard were gone. Six or eight inches of water swilled around the deck. Later, I realized the blow had heeled the boat so far to starboard the windows were blown-in. It has also flipped all three batteries from their box, breaking connection to the ignition. She wouldn't start, and now my only option was to ride her, wherever she took me. I felt sick. I loved my boat—the prettiest old boat in the harbor....yesterday.

Back out on the bow I was surrounded by a heaving, groaning mass of wood, fiberglass and aluminum. As I glanced down over the starboard bow, a 26 foot twin inboard/outboard aluminum boat flipped upside-down and disappeared under my keel. I heard her scraping the length of the boat. She never came out. A red 36 foot sloop, her whole port beam stove-in, rolled and ground against my bow. She was empty, but just beyond her a 40 foot power yacht pitched and rolled in a tangle of mooring cables and wreckage. A man on the flying bridge was trying to back her out, but getting nowhere. A woman and two screaming children were visible through the wildly swinging main cabin door. The children were crying as their frightened mother tried to comfort them. Their shouts cut through the howling wind.

A gray 32 foot sloop was pressed tightly against my port bow by a smaller sloop and a huge 50 footer. (Next day, the gray sloop's brass numbers, screws and all, were pressed nearly an inch into the oak planks of my hull. She hit me so hard the first seven oak frames were cracked or broken, and pushed inward more than a foot.) Half-a-dozen frightened people were huddled by the wheel, near the stern of the 50 footer. As she rolled and pitched, I saw her name in fancy script across the transom--”Maverick--Providence, R.I.” The partying drunks, and not a sailor in the lot.

As we drifted, too quickly for comfort, shoreward I had visions of hitting the beach and half-a-dozen big boats piling in on top of me. I got the attention of the man in the power yacht, and waved my axe in the air, then pointed toward the tangled mooring cables. A moment later he was crawling forward with an axe. As I skidded across a gourp of large rocks 50 feet from shore (trashing the bottom of my boat), we all drifted apart. With a shuddering crash I bounced off the poured concrete deck of a beach-front house.

Inside the house, a group of wide-eyed people gaped at me through thick glass French doors. BANG/CR-RACK. I smashed against the deck again, opening a hole in the port side you could pass a refrigerator through. The door opened, and a teenage boy came outside shouting,”Are you O.K. Sir?”

“Yes I am,” I answered, “but please stay there—I might need some help getting off.” Lord love the kid—he stayed. I ducked into the cabin, stuffed the cat into my life-jacket, and grabbed a pistol my uncle had brought back from Europe after WWII. I went back out, climbed up on the gun'l and, timing myself carefully, made a leap for the sun deck. The youngster grabbed me as I landed, then helped me push the boat around the corner. She floated in another 30 feet (so high was the tidal surge) before going hard aground 20 feet from the street.

As I looked back over the harbor, I watched the part boat “Maverick” back right through a friends anchored boat, which promptly went to the bottom. “Maverick” caused the entire mess when she began dragging anchor. Her 'crew', too frightened to get underway, had hoped the moorings of those she hit would hold her. Her insurers eventually paid tens of thousands of dollars in damages. One of her crew was badly roughed-up on the beach next morning, as stories of their frolic and radio transmissions circulated among locals.

Safe, and certain my boat wouldn't go anywhere, I walked a couple of blocks to a friends home. It was now nearly 1:30 AM. I asked if I could borrow his typewriter and a bed. I had a 7 A.M. Deadline, and a great first-person story for publisher and readers.

Next day I counted 18 boats ashore, and knew at least two had sunk. A 70 footer was driven so far up a creek a helicopter was called in to lift her out. I hired a bulldozer to dig a trench to re-float the boat. Back on the water, she leaked no more through the bottom than before storm and collision. I removed the engine and fuel tanks, then burned her at the boat yard in the fall.

November 5, 2008: Oh Happy Day, Shot Heard 'Round the World, The Sun Also Rises.

“Oh happy day
oh happy day....


Yesterday, at high noon, the good Marshall was gunned down in the streets of Tombstone by a young Jedi who had said he'd had enough. It was a resounding drubbing, carrying at latest count 28 states with Missouri and South Carolina too close to call. States that had not gone Democratic since Lyndon Johnson's landslide in 1964 returned to the fold. Moreover Obama made serious inroads into the deep South carrying Florida and Virginia, and the far west winning Nevada and Colorado. He even carried Indiana a state that for a short period in the twentieth century was run by the Ku Klux Klan.

It was an impressive victory winning as a Democrat, for only the second time since the FDR-Truman years' over 50 per cent of the popular vote. In the end Obama was able, by demonstrating an ease and a confidence on the political high wire, to convince America that he, not John McCain, is the safer bet in these very troubling times.

Obama's resounding victory was, like Lexington and Concord, a shot 'heard round the world' as the entire planet seemed to erupt in joy as a combination of elation and relief replaced fear and loathing. In Chicago's Grant Park, scene of angry rioting 40 years earlier, a crowd of over 150,000 happy souls gathered to greet the new President-Elect. Tears of joy ran down faces of every color. Old civil rights workers like Jesse Jackson, who had seen the dream come true in his lifetime, openly wept tears of joy.

While not winning the majority of the white vote, Obama carried a number of predominately white states. States like Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado not known for having large minority populations.
The numbers beneath the numbers reveal the broad trends as Obama improved on the performance of Gore and Kerry among white voters overall, and winning by a 10 point margin white voters aged 18-29 (1). There was much discussion during the primary season concerning Obama's ability to win the votes of those making less than $50,000 annually. According to the exit polls Obama crushed McCain winning by a margin of 73% to 25% those making under $15,000, 60%-37% those making $15-30,000, and 55%-43% among those earning $30-50,000. In fact McCain bested Obama only in the categories of those making between $50-75,00 and those making between $100-200,000.
Oddly, given the Rescumlican screed about Obama's socialist tendencies Obama in fact drubbed McCain 52%-46% among those making over $200,000 annually.

Perhaps it isn't so odd. The last time a senator from Arizona ran for President the technocrats and professional classes deserted the Republican Party in droves. Likewise this time the more comfortable and well-to-do have deserted conservatism. This is demonstrated not only by his winning the majority of voters earning over $200,000 annually but winning over, for the first time in the history of the Democratic Party, a majority of college graduates. Those with some college education voted 51-47% for Obama; college graduates went 50-48% Democratic; while those with postgraduate educations went with Obama by a resounding 58%-40% (1). Not FDR, not Truman, not JFK nor LBJ, Carter or Clinton were able to convince a majority of the college educated to vote Democratic. Here is graphic evidence of a new coalition being born as groups that had heretofore voted Republican have shifted ground.

It is difficult to say, and only time will tell, how much of this is temporary and how much is permanent. Much will rest on how well the nation is governed in the next few years and how successful Obama will be in consolidating his gains. But he has laid to rest fears that he cannot appeal to working class white voters and he has expanded the Democratic presence not only geographically into the West and the South but among critical income and age groups, not the least the young, who have demonstrated themselves to be the cornerstone of the new governing coalition.

Yesterday America made history, demonstrating its boundless capacity to adapt and surprise. For forty years we have wandered in the wilderness and groped in the darkness.
But, we have learned, the sun also rises. Yesterday America took another great stride toward creating a more perfect union. Yesterday America looked into the mirror and beheld in it's reflection the face of Barack Obama


Footnotes:

1. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/

November 3, 2008: Republican Legacy, Reflections on the Rough Rider, Buried in Shit

This journal welcomes the periodic contribution of my old friend Lawrence F. Hamp.

Larry and I go back nearly 40 years now, we met facing each other across the ramparts of that great divide known as Vietnam. First confronting each other during those contentious times, I first met Larry as a classmate in Dr. Batchelder's Political Science class. Later assigned by Dr. Mapes to do a joint study of the Civil War era Draft Riots, we quickly became fast friends. Seeking adventure wherever he may find it, Larry, who is never at a loss for words, can be depended upon to provide a unique and prescient perspective. So, without further ado, I welcome to these pages my dear old friend.

Should democrats win 60 votes in the senate, our first orders of business should be repeal (or rewriting) of the 'Patriot' act and tightening the rules regarding war-making powers of the president. These 'little' presidential wars are proving the bane of America's democratic society. Two (of half-a-dozen) have lasted a total of eighteen years, devoured tow huge public fortunes, cost the nation well over 60 thousand lives (as well as several hundred thousand life-long cripples), and left our position as the world's 'shining city on a hill' corroded to the point of dissolution.

Blame, of course, lies totally on our congress. They long ago abdicated constitutional war-making powers, and have allowed the 'little' wars to become full-blown, long-lived, wastefully mis-managed, poorly thought-out, planned and executed military adventures. Iraq/Afghanistan have become gut wrenching slaughters of innocent civilians (much like Vietnam), our air power killing far more of them than Taliban and al Quaeda combined.

Our government is already trying to weasel out of Iraq while saving some face and preserving some semblance of success. Outside of Baghdad, the country is seething, burning, exploding daily. The only reason the Shrub/McPain Baghdad 'surge' appears to have worked is because we bought-out the Sunni leaders who rand the place under Saddam, while selling out the Kurds, Christians, Turkmen, and the Shi'ah we (supposedly) went in to save.

Military commanders (American and NATO) say we've wasted our opportunity to save Afghanistan—victory there, they now claim, cannot be won on the battlefield and will have to be negotiated. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, how many tens of thousands (in each nation) will we now leave to the tender mercies of their former oppressors? Many, I expect.

Our whole national security apparatus is dis-functional, inept, more interested in spying on us than on the enemy. Failure of our intelligence services dates way back to WWII's Manhattan Engineering District Project, when Joe Stalin often learned of atomic bomb developments before FDR.

Recent reports of the National Security Agency (NSA) from two retired military officers who worked there for years, claim they routinely break the law, listen to our electronic communications, pry into our personal lives at will—and without legitimate reason. The fools are still fighting the same old turf wars, and the right hand knows not what the left is doing.

Our pentagon, CIA, FBI, NSA (and countless other creepy fascist spooks) are still being run by those who left us vulnerable on 9/11/01. They've been shuffled in and out of agencies in what amounts to a giant shell-game. Much more of this, we'll have to learn to speak and write Arabic.

It's interesting how John McCain and Dubya have both tried to calm (or hide behind) Teddy Roosevelt's Republican mantle, when neither of them would amount to a small pimple on the great President's ass, academically, politically, or in any humanitarian sense. Bush was a complete wastrel as a youth, and his youthful ignorance still rules, eliminating any possible comparison.

McCain, without his father's status as a high-ranking navy admiral, would never have made it into the naval academy, or survived his many derelictions as cadet. His standing (fifth from the bottom) in his academy class would have meant no chance of flight training for any other cadet. It seems his father's influence got him into the academy, then condemned him to five-and-a-half years in the Hanoi Hilton (where his conduct was not always 'heroic').

I'd tell you to check his military records, but they're sealed—at his request. As navy flyer, he was a rowdy officer very much like (and likely one of) those involved in the notorious “Tail-Hook Club” conventions.

On the other hand, TR was a serious young fellow from childhood. As undergrad student at Harvard, he wrote “The Naval War of 1812”, a study which is, far more than a hundred years later, still considered the most complete work on the subject. Through the course of his life, in addition to almost continuous public service, he authored more than two dozen books on a wide variety of scholarly subjects, and hundreds of thoughtful articles. As president he won the Nobel Peace Prize for reconciling war between Japan and Czarist Russia.

Teddy never made a threatening gesture, or uttered a threatening phrase. He never carried the 'big stick' he quietly spoke of. He didn't have to. His record as NYC police commissioner, Dakota rancher—bully-buster--and outlaw-catcher, Navy undersecretary and leader of his “rough-rider” friends to combat in Cuba during the Spanish conflict, assured all due respect.

TR was the last Republican president (bar Ike) to believe wealth and influence owed the masses financial honest, political integrity, and well-managed affairs at home and abroad. His handling of crooked bankers, brokers and corporate officers we so often see today would doubtless be a bit more harsh than buying up their messes. Military inefficiency demonstrated by the pentagon through Vietnam and Iraq/Afghanistan would certainly have called forth his wrath, and resulted in many premature retirements, and many more demotions.

Theodore was a no-nonsense sort of guy (though contemporary Republicans of the Bush, Cheney, McCain ilk often spoke of him as “that damned cowboy”).

To sum up, I'll quote my old grad school advisor, military history and WMU Professor of History emeritus Sherwoood Cordier. “I must say the current economic disaster could not happen to a more deserving President, but the rest of us certainly do not deserve this Bush legacy—our civil rights destroyed, endless savage wars, our economy in ruins, record national debt, and our political culture buried in shit.” (Emphasis added, because in a thirty-six year friendship I've never before known him to utter or pen either obscenity or profanity).

November 2, 2008: Further Reflections on the Swine, Kicking and Squealing, No Badge of Courage

“The size of our challenges have outgrown the smallness of our politics.”
----Barack Obama, speech at Henderson, Nevada 11/01/08


Obama has been quite right to make this election a referendum on the “generation of swine”. The swine have held sway over the electoral process for going on four decades now and have done their level best to lay waste every last vestige of our ancestor's legacy. Following the siren song of greed they have done their level best to realize Newt Gingrich's dream of returning America to the glory days of the roaring '20's. It is now 1929 and the time has come for this country to pry from the throat of the republic the cold fingers of this “boomer” generation. It is time to end the death grip of this “Generation of Swine”.

The swine will not go quietly for they have had their snouts and both front trotters in the trough for far too long now. No instead they will have to be forced from the trough kicking and squealing. It is an unpleasant task but a necessary one in order to get on with the nation's business.

Of late the good Marshall of Tombstone and the Guttersnipe have been about the country accusing Obama of being a socialist. Quoting his remark made during an exchange with “Joe the Plumber”, about “spreading the wealth a little”, the McCain campaign has torn the words out of context and blown it up into a full blown ideological confrontation between “Capitalism” and “Socialism”, even as McCain joined the ranks of those who moved to save the Capitalist from himself by way of huge injections of government funds into suddenly unstable institutions. Nevertheless adopting Adams' view that every American is an aristocrat on the make, the good Marshall was found making his last stand on Main Street deploring the lurking “socialism” and decrying Obama for wanting to take money from the well-to-do (the fittest and therefore the deserving in the eyes of the Social Darwinists) and giving it to those who “pay no taxes at all”. This line is met with the predictable chorus of boos from the assembled and is taken to mean the lazy and shiftless welfare recipients; the 'unfit' and, therefore, the 'undeserving'. While the good Marshall makes such references frequently on the stump he appears to do so with some discomfort, half believing his own press releases. To shore up this line of attack the Rescumlican slime machine brought out that old Austrian Arnold Swartznegger who promptly tells audiences, after mocking Obamas evident thinness and body physique, that he fled the old country because it was socialist. Some appropriate surrogate in the Democratic camp needs to respond by telling Arnold that Obama is more fully developed than the governor is certain more important areas. Then, after a pregnant pause, say “the brain". He possesses a more superior intelligence than the Governor of California as evident by the political party he chose to join.

Political Columnist David Broder, discussing a column he wrote in the Washington Post on NBC's “Meet the Press” today said that McCain has run a campaign free of racism. I disagree. To hold such a position is to give McCain a free pass, one which he does not deserve.

McCain rightly deserves the calumny of history for the campaign he waged for the presidency this year. This business about “Socialism” goes directly to the point. On the surface it is made to appear as a simple, albeit false, ideological dichotomy in which the voter is asked to chose between two competing economic systems. This is, of course, nonsense inasmuch as Obama is no more a socialist than either Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower for that matter. But to pose the election in those terms is to set up a convenient 'straw man' to flagellate for the benefit of the electorate. It isn't the first time an overt appeal to the greed, gluttony and avarice of the American people has been made, nor is it the first time that the public has been underestimated. And, of course, it makes perfect sense if one hopes to ride to power on the backs of real swine.

But the issue as presented cuts much deeper into the psyche of the nation. Beneath the ideological and pseudo-ideological posturing runs a message that hopes to further open the deep divisions of class and race. One hears it in how McCain follows his introduction of the issue. Charging Obama with being, at heart, a “Socialist”, he then accuses his opponent of wanting to take money from the rich, thereby “punishing success”, and giving it to “those who pay no taxes at all” thereby rewarding the unsuccessful and the undeserving.

This is, of course, complete nonsense for the Obama plan is aimed primarily at middle class tax relief. But no matter, lets take the Marshall at his word. Lets assume that that the Marshall is right and that Obama wants to take money from the rich, successful and therefore deserving and give it to the Welfare Queens. What are we to make of the characterization? For decades the face of welfare has been a face of minorities. Never mind that until well into the 1990's the majority of poor in America were white. Never mind that with the seven million that have fallen from the middle class into poverty under the Bush Administration the face of poverty in America may again be white. The fact is that when most Americans think about poverty in America, when they think about it at all, they do not conjure up their own image. Think about it. Obama was ridiculed as being a “social activist working in the projects”. Now he wants to take money from the 'fittest' and give it to “those who pay no taxes at all”. This isn't the first time campaigns have been waged against “Welfare Queens”. Ask George Corley Wallace. Class divisions in America have racial overtones. Here is high relief is the secret of the Republican success and the reason the good Marshall has finally used his last bullet in his shootout with Obama at high noon. By waging war against 'welfare' he can unabashedly support the rich while using race to keep the middle classes in line. This is why you will search in vain for any references by McCain to the middle class in America. To bring it up would highlight his weakness, for he has nothing in his bag of tricks for them. Instead he will appeal, as the Republican party has always appealed—at least since the days of Richard Nixon and Kevin Phillips—to the middle class using race, not economics, as the medium. That's how, as Phillips so astutely observed all those years ago, one goes about forging a majority when one's natural constituency is a mere 7 percent.

Is it not clear why the good Marshall begged off talking about economics from the first, saying that he didn't know as much as perhaps he should about the subject? Is it not clear why internal memo's leaked from his campaign saying that McCain needed to shift the subject from the economy to Obama because to talk about the economy would mean certain defeat? And so, true to recent form, the Rescumlicans have gone about the business of devising weapons of mass diversion. They have set up a socialist straw man, questioned Obama's character, patriotism, religious convictions, even going so far as saying that he “pals around with terrorists”. None of this, given the current economic crisis, has gained traction. And so it is back to race. Race reintroduced through the back door, but race nonetheless. Reverend Wright meet the Socialist Bogeyman and the Welfare Queen by extension. The more things change the more they remain the same.

David Broder is wrong. The Marshall isn't wearing the badge of courage.

October 31, 2008: October Surprise, Rats Jumping Ship, Reading the Tea Leaves

“The Republican fears democracy like the Capitalist fears competition.
----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

It is Halloween, and the much feared October Surprise, long a staple in the Republican play book did not materialize. The surprise was that there was no surprise. No hostages held because the GOP had negotiated with their captors to hold them till after the election, no Bin Laden tapes, no “secret plan to end the war”. Perhaps it is because the good Marshall from Tombstone has been a bit preoccupied with defending solid Republican turf. Entering the final week of the campaign, Obama will campaign in Nevada, Colorado, Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, and Florida—all so called “red” states that had vaulted 'Ol Two-Cows to the presidency.

The rats, metaphorically, are leaving the ship. In the wake of the Colin :Powell endorsement came word that the Goldwater family has endorsed Obama, along with former Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan and a former Reagan Chief of Staff. Even the kindly old Governor Bill Milliken of Michigan has been overheard saying that the good Marshall is not the man he endorsed earlier this year in the Michigan Primary.

At this point the race for change is beginning to look hopeful. As of this writing more than 3.4 million had reported voting in Florida with Obama holding a commanding 12 point lead in early voting. Huge turnouts have been likewise reported in the Carolinas and here in Georgia nearly 2 million have voted waiting in lines for as long as 10 hours. This is a testament to the nation's hunger for change.

The national polls, by some lights, show a tightening of the race particularly in the swing states. North Carolina, Nevada, Ohio, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, some say Pennsylvania are now within the margin of error. Nevertheless most polling nationally show Obama with a five to seven point lead, some much larger than that. The website www.fivethirtyeight.com also shows the race tightening. What may save Obama in the end will perhaps be the early voting in which votes were cast before the final flurry of campaign smear ads and voter anxieties. In any case this race, unlike any in our national experience is compounded by new technologies which limit pollsters' ability to reach certain demographics, particularly the young, who use cell phones almost exclusively. The result may be a huge unsampled segment of the electorate that the pollsters have not consulted and who are nevertheless making their way to the polls and registering their opinions. If so this portends a huge Obama victory. Certainly the early voting results in states like Florida and the movement of Georgia into the “swing” category reflect that something has happened in recent weeks on the ground. What this means, however, is not entirely clear and has left observers in the dark as to the possible outcome. What was once an exacting, if not an exact, science has now because of new technologies and the looming “Bradley Effect” become something like reading tea leaves. Nothing is certain and the Obama forces are taking no chances with the candidate reminding voters at each stop to vote early if they can but vote in any case.

In any case change is in the wind. One can see it in the videos of the long lines of voters waiting to record their considered judgment. One can see it in the 98% registration of the good people of Michigan who are, apparently, waiting to stampede the polling places on election day. One can also see it in the frantic attempts at voter suppression as the Rescumlicans try to hold back the tide. In Florida Republican Governor Crist outraged his fellow Republicans by sidestepping a state law—passed by his Republican majority—limiting early voting to eight hours a day. The Governor, knowing that his political life extends past November 4, heeded the cries of the people and extended by executive order voting at polling places to 12 hours a day. At least one Republican legislator was moved to comment that the governor had, by his actions, given Florida to Obama. Perhaps. Perhaps not. It may, by reducing the long lines, make it more probable that older citizens will now vote in larger numbers thus favoring McCain. It is a hard calculus with no certain outcome. Everyone, it appears, is feeling their way through this experience.

But certain old habits remain. Again in certain states, Virgina prominent among them, the GOP tricksters are up to their usual Halloween pranks. Letters have been sent to known Democratic voters that because of the high voter turnout and expected crush at the ballot box, voting for Democrats has been moved to November 5. This, of course, is nonsense but has worked in certain jurisdictions to favor Republican fortunes in the past. Likewise attempts to keep students from voting in college towns. An old trick that keeps paying off for the GOP—Grand Old Prostitute.

The United States Supreme Court ruled nearly 30 years ago that students had every constitutional right to vote where they lived. Many jurisdictions had been challenging them claiming that they were “temporary” residents and fearing their large numbers would dominate local politics. I remember in the good old days at Grand Valley we used to muse as we passed through Allendale and read the sign welcoming us—“Welcome to Allendale”, it said, “Home of Grand Valley State College”. We read it differently. “Welcome to Grand Valley”, we mused, “Home of Allendale, Michigan”. The College, at the time simply outnumbered the residents of the small town. Faced with these realities many such locations challenged students voting in their elections. It went all the way to the Supreme Court and such laws and regulations were overturned affirming the extended franchise to students who could now vote. Nevertheless the old Rovian Rescumlicans tricksters are back at it sending out warnings to students That they would somehow be violating the law if they tried to vote. Likewise, mailers to certain voters that if they have outstanding traffic tickets or are behind in child support payments or cannot bring proof of citizenship to the polls with them they will be challenged. In Ohio four years ago, the state GOP warned voters in some precincts that they would be arrested at the polls if they had outstanding traffic or child support issues. The courts intervened a few days before the election but the tactic had accomplished its goal by creating enough fear to dampen turnout and perhaps throw the election.

The Grand Old Prostitute has always feared the wrath of the electorate and has, accordingly, always fought tooth and nail the extension of the franchise. At least since Teddy Roosevelt. The old line conservatives have resisted extending the franchise to women, the Voting Rights Act of 1964, lowering the voting age to 18, the “motor-voter” laws passed by many states making it possible to register while getting one's driver's license renewed or updated. The action of the Republican dominated Florida legislature to limit voting hours during early voting is also of this ilk. Let there be no mistake about it, the Republican fears democracy like the capitalist fears competition. Both seek to limit it whenever they can; one under the guise of “conservative” principles, the other as “sound business practices”. The Republicans have every right to fear the electorate, fully 93% of the country now says that the nation is going in the wrong direction. The Grand Old Prostitute has now been reduced to representing her natural constituency-- a mere seven percent of the population-- and this time her old bag of tricks my not pull her through.

October 19, 2008: Colin Powell Steps Up, Acts of Courage and Vision, Spontaneous Combustion

This morning, on NBC's “Meet the Press,” with Tom Brokaw, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, perhaps America's most famous military leader and statesman calmly and quietly told his American audience that he will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States. Professing great admiration and friendship for John McCain the Secretary quietly and convincingly explained what led him to cross party lines and tell the country that he will vote Democratic in this year's presidential contest.

First, when questioned, he said it was not race that led him to this decision. “If that were the case”, Powell said, “I'd have endorsed Mr. Obama months ago”. Speaking with Brokaw, Powell related having met with both candidates several times over the last year. What really moved him, he said, was the conduct of both candidates during the current financial crisis, as well as the tone of both the McCain campaign and the Republican party, which he accused of moving further to the political right and out of the American mainstream. Citing the McCain fixation on the Bill Ayer's connections which, he said, was near demagoguery, the Secretary evidenced a growing unease in the company of the Rovian Rescumlicans. Powell has always been a decent, albeit sometimes not the best informed, man. A genuine giant in Republican circles, often mentioned as a possible Vice Presidential candidate, who has nevertheless felt betrayed by what one of his aides described as the “cabal” that had taken over the party in the wake of the Bush victory.
Today he made a break, perhaps not a complete break with the party, but a break nonetheless. Cracks are opening in the Republican ruling coalition as the ground shakes beneath them.

Powell said that it was doubtful that he would openly campaign for Obama in the short time remaining before the election. But his endorsement will be felt nonetheless, particularly in Virginia, South Carolina and Florida where huge populations of military and former military families reside. His voice will add gravitas to the Obama candidacy among those yet undecided and especially in pivotal swing states. Colin Powell as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emerged well over a decade ago during the First Gulf War as America's foremost military authority. It was his critique of the Rumsfeld's handling of the Second Gulf War that McCain quickly adopted producing changes in military command and what is now known as the “Surge”. Powell is one of those “transformative” figures, one of the bridges as it were, between the races. One of the first black men to emerge at the highest levels of the military and move into top governmental positions as national security advisor and Secretary of State. The phenomenon that is the Obama candidacy owes a great debt to men like Colin Powell. In a speech this morning Obama said that he is honored and deeply humbled by the endorsement he received today. The McCain campaign said it was not surprised. It shouldn't have been, Powell was simply exercising yet another act of statesmanship in a career filled with such acts of courage and vision.

The end of the week, now nearly a mere two weeks before the election, the Obama campaign has seen bedrock Republican spokesman move to join the Obama Nation.
The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and now General Colin Powell. Yesterday, in the swing state of Missouri, the Obama forces held a rally beneath the great Arch. Over 100,000 people gathered, 90,000 at the event and a reported 10,000 waiting to get in, to come, see and hear, Barack Obama's vision of where he would lead us in these troubled times. Many, on the periphery, could neither see nor hear the candidate but came to the event and stayed nevertheless because they wanted to demonstrate their support. Meanwhile it was reported this morning that the campaign had raised over 150 million dollars in the month of September. This is approaching near spontaneous combustion reminiscent of the “prairie fire” that swept this nation in the latter 19th and early 20th century with the Grange and Greenback movements. The ground is shaking, a fire is raging and all that the good Marshall can do now is wrap his arms around “Joe the Plumber” and hang on for dear life.

October 18, 2008: The Tribune Comes Out, He is Ready, New Alliances Being Born

The “Tribune is proud to endorse him”, crowed the Chicago Tribune at week's end as it endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States. Citing it's Republican roots and noting that the Tribune's first “great leader” Joseph Medill was a founder of the GOP, the Tribune broke it's 161 year tradition and for the first time endorsed a Democratic candidate for president of the United States.

Writing that “On Dec. 6, 2006, this page encouraged Obama to join the presidential campaign. We wrote that he would celebrate our common values instead of exaggerate our differences. We said he would raise the tone of the campaign. We said his intellectual depth would sharpen policy debate. In the ensuing 22 months he has done just that”...

The editors continued: “Many Americans say they're uneasy about Obama. He's pretty new to them...We can provide some assurance. We have known Obama since he entered politics a dozen years ago. We have watched him, worked with him, argued with him as he rose from an effective state senator; to an aspiring U.S. Senator to the Democratic Party's nominee for president....We have tremendous confidence in his intellectual rigor, his moral compass, and his ability to make sound, thoughtful, careful decisions. He is ready.” (1)

This is quite a statement from a journal that predates the Civil War. An early and ardent supporter of Lincoln, the Tribune has remained solidly Republican ever since, endorsing only Republicans or in the case of Horace Greeley in 1872 and Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, Republicans who were running as independents against corrupt or ineffective incumbents. Greeley, the Tribune pointed out, was later adopted by the Democrats. Nevertheless the Tribune has been a dependable Republican rag. It even endorsed Hoover, Wilke, and Dewey over FDR, Nixon over Kennedy in 1960,Goldwater over Johnson in 1964, even Eisenhower over Illinois native Adlai Stevenson in both 1952 and 1956 so predictably Republican has been the Tribune. Not this year, not this time. This year, says the Chicago Tribune, the paper is proud to add the name of Barack Obama beside that of Abraham Lincoln in the long list of men it has endorsed for President of the United States. On word of the Tribune's unprecedented action came news that the Los Angeles Times has likewise endorsed the young Jedi. Like the Tribune, the Times have also been a foghorn of the political right, and predictably Republican. To say that these endorsements are remarkable is an understatement. The ground beneath the political landscape is shaking, new coalitions are being formed, new alliances are being born.

Footnotes:

1. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-08endorsements-htmlstory,0,5602186.htmlstor

October 16, 2008: Say It Ain't so Joe, The Marshall and the Guttersnipe, Paper Doll World

In last night's final Presidential debate, the good Marshall of Tombstone brought up an encounter last Sunday between an Ohio plumber named Joe and Barack at an Obama rally in Toledo. Seizing upon the brief encounter McCain tried desperately—mentioning poor Joe some 21 times during the ninety minutes—to make the Ohio Republican the leitmotif of his latest effort to liberally smear vast quantities of lipstick on a quite ugly Republican pig.

To hear the good Marshall relate Joe's plight, the hapless plumber has been working doggedly long hours of overtime in order to get his slice of the American Pie. As McCain described the encounter the erstwhile plumber, working long hours for a number of years, now makes enough money to purchase his boss' business, but would be prevented from entering the “ownership” class—becoming one of the “elect” as it were-- by Obama's alleged confiscatory tax scheme. After a brief chat, the good Marshall quoted Obama as ending the conversation by saying that we need to “spread the wealth around”.

Joe the Plumber has become, virtually overnight, America's latest celebrity with news satellite trucks parked in his yard. The “everyman” of the Republican campaign has now taken to holding impromptu news conferences and interviews holding forth on reactionary politics and likening Obama to Sammy Davis Jr. He has become the rage of the reactionary Rescumlican talk-show circuit. But, as they say, does he wash?

The first indications emerged from the post-debate polling done by CBS in which 54% of those watching judged Obama, about 35% thought it was a tie, and the predictable 25% or so who judged McCain the winner. For all the talk about the hapless Joe, McCain's numbers nudged not a bit. America remained unconvinced.

Moreover, things began to quickly unravel as the media began to focus attention on this latest Republican ruse. Keith Olbermann reported on his “Countdown” program tonight that Joe was not in the tax bracket, that is does not make over a quarter of a million dollars a year, and would not be subject to increased taxation under the Obama plan. Furthermore, Joe was making only $40,000 a year and would fare much better under the Obama plan. In addition there were no plans for Joe to purchase the business which in any case did not make a profit of over a quarter of a million dollars, in fact it was less than half that. Lastly poor Joe has no plumber's license. He is an “independent” contractor, one who works for a “general” contractor but as an independent laborer. A 1099 employee as they say in the tax business. One who works by the day, with no benefits and, because his “employer” is not required to pay withholding taxes, finds himself one of the hundreds of thousands of such folks who owe back taxes. In fact Joe the Plumber is no plumber at all. He is simply a day laborer with no rights and no protection. Why this man votes Republican is anyone's guess; why he should act as a rescumlican shill is an even greater puzzle. Nevertheless there he stood on a bright Toledo Sunday coaxing from the Democratic nominee a pledge to “spread the wealth around a little”.

During the debate Obama retorted that he meant sharing some of Warren Buffet's wealth and giving it to people like Joe the Plumber, but McCain would not be deterred from his single-minded effort to smear mass quantities of red lipstick. Here it was in bold relief, the party of privilege pretending to defend the aspirations of the “common man”.

Alas, for the hapless Marshall, the Republican understanding of the “common man” is a rather shallow one, reduced to caricatures and misrepresentations. Here was a boldface admission by the conservatives that their ideal “common man” is a white, deeply suspicious, angry, middle-age male on the cusp of “making it” but held back by the demands of the great “undeserving”. The party of Darwin in microcosm. It can be heard in the adjectives they choose to describe him, “Reagan Republicans” conjuring up Macolm county Michigan, a Detroit suburb that swung Republican in the great white 'backlash' of 1966 and has remained so since, but has nevertheless been forever identified as “Reagan Country”; the “angry white male” and “white working-class voters” that one hears Patrick Buchanan continually refer to—hardworking, play-by-the-rules, male (by inference) deserving whites on the make. These are the wheat in the Republican grist, all others are chaff.

It is perhaps laudable that the Republican Party occasionally rediscovers at least some remnants of the once great late American Middle Class, albeit a narrow one. But the condescension is palpable. “Joe the Plumber”, a mere caricature of the millions who strive to make it in these United States, is transformed in the mind of the Guttersnipe into 'Joe Six-Pack' and his “Hockey-Mom” wife. “Joe Six-Pack” is a derogatory term used by many of the “New Left” back in the sixties to describe the beer guzzling hard-hat who could not bring himself to raise his eyes about the rim of his beer can to see what was happening in the world around him. “Hockey-Mom” is a derivative of the old “Soccer-Mom” given currency by rescumlicans in the 1990's to describe middle-aged stay-at-home mothers whose sole function in life was to chauffer their kids around and run errands all day. The Marshall and the Guttersnipe have reduced this campaign to nothing other than lip-service, to mere characterizations, when they deign to address the legitimate needs of the struggling American. For the Marshall and the Guttersnipe, the world is peopled by mere two-dimensional cut-out characters. When they hold a mirror up before America, the country sees a mere characterization of itself in the reflection; not a photograph but a cartoon. A paper-doll world for a paper-doll boy and girl.

“Come back when you grow up girl
You’re still living in a paper doll world
Living ain't easy, loving's twice as tough
Come back baby, when you grow up”
---Bobby Vee, “Come Back When You Grow Up Girl”

October 12, 2008: A Day at Houseman Field, The Belly of the Beast, Up on the Stage.

Forty years ago, at about this time, I joined several members of the College Democrats and attended a George Wallace rally at Houseman Field in Grand Rapids. We went as protesters. I recall that it was a bright sunny morning but the mood was anything but cheerful. At one end of the field was erected a platform upon which a country music group entertained the crowd as we entered. After brief introductions, which included former Detroit Tigers star pitcher Frank Lary, the old hate-monger was duly introduced.

Wallace, a former pugilist, was a short, squat man with deep sunken eyes and countenance that betrayed a deep suspicion of anything that smacked of urbanity. His was not a message of tolerance. Delivering his standard stump speech in which he would ridicule the “pointy-headed intellectuals” and condemn the “brief-case totin' bureaucrats” and threatening to run over any protester who would dare lie down in front of his vehicle, Wallace worked the crowd into quite a lather. We played our part, holding signs saying “If you liked Hitler, You'll love Wallace” and shouting “Seig Heil” at what we thought were appropriate moments as we protested what we thought were fascist undercurrents in the Wallace campaign. I was struck by a coin thrown in our general direction by one of the faithful. It was great theatre, but in the end Michigan went for Hubert Humphrey.

I had thought that I had seen the worst side of American Politics. I had been to the belly of the beast and survived to tell of the experience. I find now that I have not. My wife showed me a clip on Youtube in which people gathering before a McCain-Palin rally were questioned about what they thought of Barack Obama. The tape is frightening.

What it reveals is that the Marshall needs to do very little to rile the crowd for the assembled have already been spoon-fed so much misinformation—so much slime—the internet hate mongers, Fox Noise, the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign itself-- that they arrive fully intending to demonstrate, in ways that the Wallace people were not, to vent their fear and rage. On this tape one finds recorded the group assemble, mostly if not entirely white, fully convinced that the Democratic Nominee is a Muslim, has terrorist ties, and is as one man put it “a one man terror cell”. In the eyes of these people the nominee of a major political party, in fact the party that has fought for the interests of such people for most of the last century, has somehow been transformed into an alien, indeed an enemy of the state. Under these circumstances it doesn't take much convincing to get these people to believe the rescumlican screed, in fact it takes no convincing at all.

During the week a middle aged man took the microphone at one of McCain's rallies and shaking with anger in his voice protested that McCain had not taken it to Obama in their last encounter. McCain, in response, assured the assembled that in the last debate he would finally summon the courage to bring up these charges to Obama's face. By Friday, things were getting out of hand. In a rally at Minneapolis McCain, already warned by Senator Norm Coleman, who is now fighting to hold his seat against the up-and-coming Al Franken, to tone down the rhetoric took to the stage and held yet another of his famous “town hall” meetings. The problem with these affairs is that a microphone is given to the audience and given the nature of those attracted and the opinions they have been fed to believe, the result was predictable. A young firefighter told the Senator that he feared raising his as yet unborn child in an Obama nation. With a look of resignation in his face the good Marshall told his follower, to a chorus of boos from the crowd, that Obama is a decent man, a family man, and that he had nothing to fear from an Obama presidency. Moments later a woman informed the Senator that she had been reading, without mentioning the source, that Obama was an Arab. Again the good Marshall made a correction, seizing the microphone and telling the audience that Obama was not an Arab and that the only thing separating the two of them are serious disagreements over fundamental policy and views of governance, again to the disapproval of those in attendance.

It struck me as I watched these images flash before me that this was a new low in American political discourse. With the possible exception of Joe McCarthy, nowhere in American political history can one find the vilification of one's political opponents at such a visceral level. To be sure McCarthy made his charges of treason, but McCarthy focused on bureaucrats and citizens both inside and outside government. The Rovian rescumlicans make charges of treason and trucking with the enemy not only in the political arena but in the very contest for the highest office in the land. At Houseman Field, all those years ago, I never heard George Wallace or his followers shout “Traitor”or Kill Him”. George Wallace, forever remembered as the voice of intolerance and hate, never brought our political discourse so low. Forty years ago it was those of us at the edge of the crowd that lowered political discourse. Today its the ones up on the stage.

Footnotes:

1.http://www.youtube.com/watch?=Kjxzmz.XAg9E
Google youtube, then McCain then McCain-Palin mob.

October 11, 2008: A Lotta Nerve, Losing Ugly, What A Drag It Is To See You

“You got a lotta nerve
to say you are my friend
when I was down
you just stood there grinnin'

You got a lotta nerve
to say you got a helpin' hand to lend
you just want to be
on the side that's winnin' ----Bob Dylan “Positively 4th Street” (1)

“My friends”, the old Marshall of Tombstone says before he issues yet another savage attack on an honorable man. It is said of McCain that he addresses all of his adversaries with this disclaimer. The words are spoken with a tight-lipped smile and often through clenched teeth. The tone is ironic and full of sarcasm, but is always a prelude to a statement dismissive of either his opponent, the matter at hand, or both. The pattern is so pronounced that his real friends recoil at its use preferring instead to be referred to as his enemy or not at all. There is a certain disingenuous quality about his use of the term. It isn't simply that John McCain comes across as a grumpy old man it is that when he tries to enamor himself with his audience by addressing them as “My Friends” a certain chill goes down the spine. Those assembled think that perhaps the good Marshall has confused them with his North Vietnamese captors.

In any case it is the penultimate irony that the good Marshall should, at this late date in the campaign, now find himself in a position wherein he must address those of middling means as his friends. For nearly thirty years McCain stood grinnin' as the middle class was savaged by the public policies of his party. Now that he finds himself about to be hoisted on his own petard, he suddenly has an epiphany discovering at a time in life well past retirement that something has gone terribly wrong;; perhaps that his conservative “principles” weren't principles at all but mere window dressing for greed; that all those platitudes pronounced with such conviction at the conventions and the 'rubber-chicken' circuit were, in the end, simply lipstick on a pig.

The problem that is John McCain is that he is arguably the most ethically challenged member of the United States Senate. Yes, the Senators of Louisiana and Idaho have had their sexual malfunctions but they can be relied upon to vote the party line and stand for good old pachyderm principles however misguided they be. The Marshall, on the other hand, is driven by blind ambition and will resort to unlimited political expediency in an effort to achieve what his father and grandfather could not—become “commander-in-chief”.

To achieve the ultimate prize the good Marshall must be on the side that's winnin'. To that end, McCain early joined the Republican party, aligning himself with the politically and economically well placed. Blaming the Democrats for “losing” Vietnam, he joined up with the Republicans becoming an eager water carrier for the well-heeled K-Street lobbyists and the military defense contractors. No sooner had he warmed his newly won congressional seat then he set about selling himself to Charles Keating (2) and other moguls of the financial industry. Today his entire campaign is run by lobbyists, men who are still on the payroll of their respective companies and who regularly conduct business from the bus of the “Straight-Talk Express”. From the moment he stepped into the political arena John McCain was a wholly owned subsidiary of K-Street.

Epiphany always, it seems, comes to desperate men in moments of desperation. Dukkakis and the Clinton's always discovered the “unwashed” when clear defeat was on the horizon. So it is now with the good Marshall as he tells us with a straight face that he now has a helpin' hand to lend. McCain displayed a lot of nerve in the debate last week. Between clenched teeth and prefacing his proposal with the inevitable “my friends”, the Marshall of Tombstone unveiled a 300 billion dollar plan to buy up bad mortgages. Like the selection of the the Guttersnipe as his running mate, and his “withdrawal” from the campaign to confront the financial crisis, this was yet another attempt to reset the clock and put himself and Obama back on the starting blocks. It didn't wash, post-debate polling showed Obama the clear winner and winning independents by 15 points, 54-39.

By the end of the week it was back to the old Rovian tactics of smear and fear. In an unprecedented spectacle would-be First Lady Cindy McCain took to the stump smearing the differences between the Democratic nominee and her husband. Calling attention to her own son's service, she accused Obama of not protecting her child saying that if the Democrat were to, if only briefly, stand in her shoes, he would feel a chill run down his spine. The chill, however, is running down the collective spines of the entire Republican ticket. By week's end some polls, Gallup and Newsweek among them, had Obama up by 11 points, roughly 52-41% nationally. With Republican fortunes dropping faster than the Dow Jones Industrials, so desperate had it become for the McCain camp that Indiana is fast becoming a contested state. With a bit more than three weeks left before the election the Republicans are losing and losing ugly.

The McCain's own more mansions than John can literally count. Cindy, it has been reported, spends as much as a quarter million dollars a month on credit card purchases. They find themselves now representing the party of wealth, the stock-jobbers who have systematically gutted the American industrial and commercial base; the party of corruption and greed. Now as the Republican ticket stands before us seeking a new lease on the White House, they have once again reverted to the politics of smear and fear.
“It won't work, not this time...” says Barack Obama.

As we watch the sorry exhibition that are Cindy and Sarah and John, I'm once again reminded of the words of Bob Dylan:

“I wish that for just one time
you could stand inside my shoes
and just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
you could stand inside my shoes
you'd know what a drag it is
to see you.”

Footnotes:

1.http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/positively-4th-street

2.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_5

October 10, 2008: Guttersnipe in Heels, Cowardice at High Noon, A Sheep in Sheep's Clothing.

Enter the guttersnipe. Announcing that the “gloves are off and the heels are on”, Sarah Palin took to the hustings in an erstwhile attempt to assassinate the character of the Democratic nominee for President of the United States. It seems that the Jedi had made the acquaintance of one Bill Ayers, one of the founders of the “Weathermen” or “Weather Underground”, an off-shoot of the 60's group “Students for a Democratic Society” or SDS. The Weathermen got their name, it is held, from Bob Dylan's line “you don't need the weather man to know which way the wind blows”, and became a more radical and violent exponent of resistance to the Vietnam war. Ayers, it is held, was involved in plans to bomb government buildings back in the late 60's or early 70's, but by the time he met Obama he had become a Professor at the University of Illinois and was serving as a board member on a charity run by the Annanburg family, staunch Republicans who had earned high level appointments from none other than Ronald Reagan himself.

It was on this conservative board that Obama met Ayers who, he understood, had by this time become rehabilitated. Nonetheless the Resumlicans, led by their newest howler the guttersnipe in heels, have attempted to paint a disturbing picture of the Democratic nominee as somehow threatening. Palin was out on the stump screeching that Obama “thinks nothing of palling around with terrorists”, with “people who would hurt America”.

The strategy is straightforward enough. Chris Matthews of MSNBC has caught on to it: “Connect the dots” he said, the use of Obama's middle name “Hussein” as McCain and Palin are introduced, link him with the “weather underground” and label him dangerous, investigate his contributors and charge that he is getting money from “Arab” sources. Already a flourishing internet campaign alleging that Obama is secretly a Muslim has been doing its worst for months. Seen Hannity has given these charges national accreditation. Building on this the Rescumlicans are working to “swift-boat” Obama into a 'One-man sleeper cell'. Playing 'all-Ayers-all-the-time', and doing her best imitation of Ann Coulter, the guttersnipe in heels has been addressing rancorous rallies in which the undertone has become increasingly hateful, dangerous and violent. Shouts of “traitor” and “kill him” and “terrorist” come from the crowd as the two Republican nominees spew their rescumlican screed.

“why did you throw the jack of hearts away
why did you throw the jack of hearts away?
It was the only card in the deck
that I had left to play” ----The Doors “Hyacinth House”

The awful truth is that the good Marshall cannot bring himself to throw away the only card in the deck that he has left to play: the race card. By painting Obama as an “Arab”, an “African-Arab” if you will, by alluding to imaginary “terrorist” connections, and a “foreign religion” the “Straight-talk Express” can avoid the charge of conducting a racist campaign as it has been traditionally understood in these United States by conducting an untraditional racist campaign. The Marshall and his minions were made to understand, in the wake of Obama's European Tour that the charge that he was presumptuous in appearing presidential to enthusiastic European crowds—crowds larger than JFK or what is worse to the political wrong Ronnie Reagan himself—were quickly decoded by a discerning electorate as a simple code word for “uppity”. Similarly the angry old curmudgeon, and author of the Nixonian Code Words, Pat Buchanan was quickly called down by a black woman for his use of the word “exotic” when describing Obama. “What is that, a substitute for the “N” word?” he was asked. No, the rescumlicans discovered, these tactics simply won't do. Another strategy must be employed. And so it was deemed that they would tar the Democratic Nominee with associations to our current enemies by any means necessary. The old code words simply won't do, new code words are necessary.

This week saw not only the guttersnipe bring political discourse down to the level of her expectations, but his wife Cindy excoriate Obama for voting against funding for the troops. Citing her own son's service “ol sin savagely criticized Obama for voting against funding for the Iraq war that did not include a time line of withdrawal forgetting to mention that her husband likewise voted “against” the troops when funding included such a time line. But in an unprecedented act by a potential First Lady, Cindy McCain joined the chorus as the rescumlican slime machine went about the business of ginning up the base.

But, alas, during this week's debate with Obama, the good Marshall would bring none of this up. For ninety minutes he squared off with the Jedi and not once were these charges brought up demonstrating that the good Marshall would rather hide behind the skirts of his wife and his running mate, as they do the “heavy lifting” of the campaign. No, it seems, the good Marshall of Tombstone has not the courage of his convictions and when he faced his adversary in the middle of main street he simply “Quayled”. “A sheep in sheep's clothing”, Winston Churchill had once derisively referred to a political opponent; perhaps none dare call it cowardice.

October 9, 2008: The Party of Darwin, Wall Street Meltdown, Promise of a New Deal

It is one of the delicious ironies of history that the political party most at war with Darwin should, in the end, embrace a bastard form of “Darwinism”. The 'free market' ideology, it is held, recognizes the 'fittest' and rewards them accordingly and, if they should falter in the face of fortune, it is right and proper to come to their aid given that they have demonstrated themselves to be the 'most deserving' among us. It is for this reason that conservatives have been at once so loathe to intervene on behalf of those afflicted and so quick to aid of the comfortable.

It is good, perhaps, that greed has its representation, for not in our lifetime have the comfortable been so afflicted. Yesterday an article in “MSN Money” graphically charted the Wall Street Meltdown. Since October 9, 2007 the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 33.3% of its value; the Standard and Poor's 500 index was down 36.35%; the Standard and Poor 100 down 35.10%. The emerging financial emergency has become global in scope as is evident by the 41.83% decline in Japan's Nikkei index since October 11, 2007; the 31.58% decline of the British FTSE 100 since October 12, 2007; and the decline of the German DAX index of 33.76% in the same period.(1) Not since the 1930's have the markets given so much ground. So serious is this that the U.S. Markets alone have lost well over 8 trillion dollars, including over 2 trillion in pension and retirement funds. Nevertheless as we watch the savings of a generation evaporate before our eyes greed continues to win out. This week saw the collapse of Wachovia Bank (known down here as “walk over ya”) and a nasty fight emerge between Citigroup and Wells Fargo Bank over the stinking carcass. This crisis, we are told, is the result of a “liquidity” problem in which banks do not have enough money to lend to other banks or to put out on loans threatening to shut down the economy. Indeed there is emerging anecdotal evidence that this is occurring. Caterpillar Tractor has experienced cash flow problems, Bill Heard, one of the oldest and largest auto dealerships in the Southeast, in business since 1908, closed its doors because it couldn't finance its floor plan, Neptune irrigation in Chicago has gone belly up for the same reason. Yet Wells Fargo could come up with two billion to purchase the failing Wachovia, and Citigroup found 15 Billion to make a counteroffer.

I remember many years ago watching Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee defend Bill Gates' “right to a monopoly”, not understanding that if someone has a monopoly then he “owns” the market. If the market is “owned”, that is it has been “cornered” as we used to say, then it cannot be free. To own the market is to eliminate competition by definition. A market free of competition is no free market at all. Hatch, and his ilk, driven as they are by the ideological imperative, cannot see the implicit contradiction. What disturbs many of us on the outside is watching those “most select”, the very “fittest” as it were, swallow whole their former competitors as they use this crisis to further concentrate wealth and power. This not only gives lie to the myth of the “free market” in that insofar as the market forces are allowed to run free the result is that capital continues to reconfigure itself into fewer hands, but those involved in executing the final coup de grace do so in the sure knowledge that government will come to their rescue should they fail.

We have seen ample evidence of this in our recent past, under the aegis of nominally “conservative” stewardship. The S&L bailout in the late 80's in the wake of Reagan's suspension of rules restricting S&L real estate investments and the ensuing lax supervision of the industry. The Chrysler bailout in the late 70's, and now the bailout of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, AIG, and now the entire investment sector of the American economy with this 700 billion dollar “rescue” package passed last week and signed into law by that great “conservative” 'Ol Two-Cows himself. You see these institutions are too big to let them fail. To let the “free market” forces hand these scoundrels their just reward would devastate the rest of the economy.

Indeed Kevin Phillips, in his latest work “Bad Money” makes precisely this point. The investment sector, which composed roughly 7 percent of the national economy in 1960, now comprises nearly a quarter of the Gross National Product.(2) Banking and investments now comprise nearly a quarter of the national economy. For this reason, and this reason alone, a broad consensus was quickly reached to rescue the industry from it's own greed and folly; to save these bankers from themselves.

But deep fissures lie beneath the surface. Three weeks ago after waiting until as mother would say, “the last dog is hung”, the Bush administration sent Treasury Secretary Paulson before the cameras to tell the nation that we were in dire straights. The sub-prime mess had created such a credit problem that the entire economy was due to shut down if Congress did not act immediately. Presenting the Congress with a three page plan, essentially giving the Secretary unlimited control over a 700 billion dollar appropriation, Congress balked. Early that week the Democrats worked with the White House to place oversight and regulatory authority and introduce a modicum of transparency into the measure. Then the Good Marshall of Tombstone announced that he was “suspending” his campaign and marched on Washington playing his best Gary Cooper in “High Noon”. 'Ol Two-Cows, smelling a rat, announced that he would hold a meeting with both presidential candidates which would include congressional leadership, Treasury and Budget officials, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. At this meeting, held late in the week, McCain sat silent as Obama rigorously questioned those attending on the nature and scope of the problem and the proposed remedies, finally asking John if he had anything to add. The good Marshall would have us believe that he descended upon Washington and shook things up negotiating in the process a better deal for the people. Indeed it was otherwise.

What had in fact transpired was telling. Obama was given authority by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to speak for the Democrats. McCain arrived speaking only for himself and his campaign. What the crisis revealed was not only the erratic behavior of the senator from Arizona but the deep fissures of the Republican Party. The White House and the Republican caucus in the Senate approved the measure. House Republicans, the product of Newt Gingrich's recruiting efforts and his “contract on America”, held their ideological line and voted the measure down. Democrats told the White House that they would support the measure only if a majority of the minority party would sign on. It didn't happen and all of the Marshall’s men could not convince the ideologically pure House Republicans to do otherwise. McCain left town leaving congressional leaders to iron out the final product.

The country was not impressed and the stock market went South. Eventually the measure passed, the Marshall voting for it but imploring the president to veto the measure nonetheless. Here we had McCain begging 'Ol Two-Cows to save him from himself.

Deep fissures like beneath the surface and the ground moves beneath the foundations of the republic threatening as it does the ruling coalition and promising a new deal.

Footnotes:

1.http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investigating/Dispatch/market-dispatches--
100708.aspx?GT1=302

2. Phillips, Kevin. “Bad Money Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and The
Global Crisis of American Capitalism”. 2008, The Penguin Group, Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York. 239 pages.

October 5, 2008: Politics of Desperation, Lipstick on a Pig, An empty Blouse

The good Marshall of Tombstone set the country a titter with his nomination of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for the Vice Presidency. It was an act of political desperation in the wake of Barack Obama's triumphal performance days earlier in Denver in which after securing the Democratic nomination he led the party from the convention hall to what once was called “Mile High” stadium to deliver an acceptance speech before and audience of 85,000. The speech was a masterpiece, conveying hope and promise in these troubling times. Falling in the polls by nearly 7 points, McCain knew he had to have a “game changer”. He chose Sarah Palin. In so doing, the Marshall of Tombstone attempted to put a populist veneer on the politics of greed. Lipstick on a pig.

Last week saw the much heralded debate between Palin and the Democratic nominee for Vice President, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Biden brought to the debate the experience of 30 years in the Senate, including chairmanships of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations Committees. Palin brings 18 months as governor of Alaska during which time she has embroiled herself in an abuse of power fracas involving a former brother-in-law. She now stands as the only candidate for national office in the history of the United States to stand for election while under supenoae. The debate began amicably enough when she greeted the senator on stage and asked if she could call him Joe. Thats where civility ended. During the ensuing 90 minutes the governor rambled on reciting apparently well memorized “talking points” of the Republican National Committee-- none of which were true-- and playing the guttersnipe. Finally, near the end, she boldly announced that she would answer only questions she wanted to answer in the way she wanted to answer them, in effect telling the moderator and the audience that they could collectively go to hell.

Later Kieth Olbermann in his “Countdown” program on MSNBC, pointed out that debates, if they serve any purpose at all, are meant to throw the candidates into situations that most closely resemble governing. Situations wherein they have no control over the subject matter nor the order in which they appear. Palin steadfastly refused to follow the format, suggesting an unease with reality as it usually presents itself.

Much was made of the governor in the days following the Republican convention. She was experienced they said, she was poised they said, she was ready they said. But for the first time in our national experience a candidate for Vice President was kept from the media and the talk circuit, even kept off the Sunday morning talk shows after the first Presidential debate between Obama and McCain. McCain campaign aids descended upon the Palin group and threw a protective ring around her, shielding her from the public and limiting her exposure to well orchestrated photo-ops and campaign rallies. Finally a few interviews were authorized, most notably with Charles Gibson and Katie Curic, in which our worst fears were made manifest. She was rambling, repetitive, unfocused, sounding very much like the Dana Garvey's savaging of Pappy Bush in the late 80's endlessly repeating “stay the course, a thousand points of light”....Her performance was laughable were it not so painful to watch. Accordingly her standing in the polls plummeted. By debate time several influential conservatives, including writers at the National Review were calling for her to do the right thing and resign from the ticket.

By Tuesday night the whole world was watching, Nearly 70 million Americans tuned in to see if she would self-destruct on national television. Such is the nature of American politics, a truly blood sport. The issue by Thursday night was not whether she would win but whether she would survive. Armed with several talking points which, as the contest dragged on, became endlessly repeated, Palin managed to lay against the ropes and let the clock run out. By debate's end, fewer than a quarter of independent voters thought she had the right stuff.

Though her performance was unremarkable it was nevertheless telling for the points she kept reiterating were not only the same shopworn cliche's that Reagan had used so well but several hostile jabs at the stock jobbers on Wall Street. This, of course, did not translate itself into a full-throated call for re-regulation, on the contrary. But the spectacle of a Republican openly criticizing Wall Street was, nevertheless, worth the price of admission. More laughable was her steadfast criticism of “Washington insiders” and “Elites” as she was punching her ticket of admission.

The spectacle that has become Sarah Palin, however, says more about the Good Marshall than it does about the erstwhile candidate. The correct choice would have been Willard “Mitt” Romney. Romney had earned a spot on the ticket having challenged McCain and winning several states. More importantly he would have brought Michigan into the Republican column and perhaps put Massachusetts into play. But McCain did not have the courage to stand up to the Bible-thumping howlers on the political right who view Mormonism as a cult and, therefore, find Romney unpalatable. He could have chosen Lieberman and created a 'national unity' ticket much as Lincoln had done by choosing the Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to run with him in 1864. Instead he chose Palin, a bone to the political Right which on balance might bring him three votes in the electoral college. By picking Palin the good Marshall demonstrated that he would prefer an empty blouse over substance, a vessel into which one can pour as much bull shit as one person can hold. In this she resembles 'Ol Two-Cows. The difference is that she apparently doesn't hold it very well.

Meanwhile the McCain camp announced as the world focused on the debate that they were pulling out of Michigan.

October 4, 2008: Social Darwinism, Selfishness as the Highest Charity, The Right to Starve

A Polish rose by any other name is still a dandelion” ---Quotations of Chairman Joe

In the American political tradition, both modern American liberalism and modern American conservatism trace their roots back to the nineteenth century European liberalism rooted in the economic philosophies of Smith, Malthus, Ricardo, Stuart and Mill. Indeed so great was the influence of Smith that Darwin “confessed that his model for natural selection had been Smith's concept of Market competition; so men were just retracing Darwin's steps when they brought biological 'laws' back into the world of economics to create 'Social Darwinism'”. (1)(2)

Social Darwinism had become the rage by the late nineteenth century. Writers like William Graham Sumner took lessons from Smith but more importantly Malthus and Darwin to lay the basis for economic theory that John Kenneth Galbraith would later refer to as the “grim science”. If evolution was the law of nature then, they reasoned, “automatic progress was to be expected in man's economic activity” as well. (1) Garry Wills' summarized it this way: “If one progresses by survival of the fittest, then, as a consequence, the less fit do not survive. If the race is never finally won, at least some competitors are forever eliminated. Malthus made this clear when he said that, since the Invisible Hand (3) provides the maximum food intended by Nature and Nature's God (Malthus was a clergyman), it was the will of nature that population in excess of this divine provender should starve (if it were allowed to come into the world)”. (4) “This cruel consistency” led by degrees to the belief that the worst thing you could do was help your fellow man. Charity becomes, to these 'enlightened' souls, an abject form of evil. To feed the huddled masses would lead to further overpopulation and suffering, better—more humane—in the mind of Malthus was to let them starve. It isn't simply that the race goes to the strongest but that the survival of the 'less fit' threatens progress itself. The very concept of Charity as it had been passed through the ages by our religious institutions was stood on its head. Grown men of property and standing were known to publicly proclaim that selfishness was the highest form of charity.

The toxic mix of nineteenth century economics, biology and sociology served to give a 'scientific' veneer to greed translating itself into what Mark Twain labeled the “Guilded Age” dominated by what Ida Tarbell called the “Robber Barons”. It took over a half century of reform to right the ship.

The modern ear has no tolerance for the din of such nonsense. What is left of Social Darwinism still reverberates down through the twentieth century in the writings of Ayn Rand and in the bedrock assumptions of Milton Friedman and Bill Buckley but rarely do they give it open expression. Instead new forms must be assumed, a more progressive pose must be struck in order to appeal to modern man. To that end modern conservatives use 'liberation' terminology in order to mask the true nature of their creed. To 'liberate' the markets from harmful regulation that is, to these lights, both inefficient because it restricts the free movement of the market but also immoral because it empowers the 'less fit'. Empowering the 'less fit' means threatening progress itself. To threaten progress is to threaten the 'social good' or, in the words of the founders, the 'general welfare'. In the pretzel logic of moder conservatism the welfare state thereby threatens the general welfare. This logic extends beyond the commodities markets to embrace the labor markets, investment markets as well as the markets of political and social ideas and beliefs. It is through such mental gymnastics that conservatives can draw distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor but cannot bring the same standards to the rich. The rich, you see, are by definition deserving. It is a modern mutation of “Social Darwinism” that drives the conservative to reduce all human interaction to market functions and to resist any subsequent regulation on any such market. To introduce fetters on intercourse is said to deny freedom. What they mean of course is that to impose restraints—civility if you will—is to deny the victor his presumed right to rape not only his fellow man but mother nature in the bargain. It is also to deny the vanquished his right to starve.

ootnotes:

1.Wills, Garry. “Nixon Agonistes, The Crisis of the Self-Made Man”
Houghton Mifflin Company. Boston 1970. page 548.

2.For an enlightening discussion of the origins of modern conservative and
liberal thought as it pertains to nineteenth century liberalism see Garry Wills'
“Nixon Agonistes” a deeply penetrating analysis of Richard Nixon and his time

3.The operation of the market at which a purchase price is reached through the
impersonal forces of supply and demand is held by Smith and others to be
the most rational and efficient means to allocate resources in a given society.
Smith held that these forces acted as like an “invisible hand” in the marketplace.
Later wits confused the Invisible Hand with Providence forever transforming classical Liberalism, that is modern conservatism, into a theology.

October 3, 2008: Every Man a King, The Stalking Horse, Making Democracy Aristocratic

“Not only the poorest mechanic, but the man who lives upon common charity, nay the common beggars in the streets...court a set of admirers, and plume themselves on that superiority which they have, or fancy they have, over some others...When a wretch could no longer attract the notice of a man, woman or child, he must be respectable in the eyes of his dog. 'Who will love me then?' was the pathetic reply of one, who starved himself to feed his mastiff, to a charitable passenger who advised him to kill or sell the animal.”----John Adams. (1)

Every man, John Adams claimed, needs to be held in esteem and, by extension, to lord over someone else. “Even the American democrat, Adams reasoned, would rather rule over an inferior than dispossess a superior. His passion is for supremacy, not equality, and so long as he is assured an audience of lessors, he will be content with his lowly status”. Indeed as Corey Robin has pointed out the promise of American life, the American Dream if you will, was not an egalitarian society nor, necessarily, a meritocracy. Rather the promise of the American dream was “to rule over another person” or in Huey Long's memorable turn of phrase, “Every Man a King”. (1)

The problem for American conservatives is how, in a democratic society, does one make privilege palatable? The solution, answers Robin, is not to “defend the ancien regime of king, priest and lord. Nor have they appealed to antimodern arguments of tradition and history.(2) Instead, they have surrounded an array of old regimes—in the family, the factory, and the field—with fences and gates as they descant on mobility and innovation, freedom and the future. More importantly, they moved to give it a veneer of democracy.

“It took the American slaveholder to grasp the power of this insight. The best way to protect their class, the masters, realized, was to democratize it...to that end, Southern politicians attempted to pass legislation and provide tax breaks to ensure that every white man owned at least one slave ...so invested would he be in his mastery that he'd work to keep all others in their place”. (1)

But such dynamics were not novel to the South. The Virginian George Fitzhugh (1806-1881) argued in 1857 that all men desired to live without work, and that America was witnessing a form of wage slavery emerging in the capitalist North much more inhumane that what existed in the Antebellum South,(3) in effect reiterating from yet another perspective Adams' thesis. A man must be about the business of distinguishing himself; a man “on the make” to become in time a king (by living without work) of his own domain. The acquisition of wealth whether by slaveholder or tycoon became the ultimate act of self-definition “through which the 'uncommon' man—who could be anybody—distinguished himself from the 'undifferentiated mass'. To amass wealth was not only to exercise freedom through material means but also a way of lording oneself over others.” (1)

Whether under the ancient regime of slavery or the emerging new world order of capitalist 'free' enterprise, Americans and westerners generally have consistently embraced political philosophies that have rooted themselves, whatever their stated ideals, upon assumed inequality. The problem, for the modern democratic state, is how do you accommodate a form of vassalage (wage slaves in Fitzhugh's memorable definition), in a free society? After all if the purpose of a 'free' society is to allow—indeed encourage—exaggerated concentrations of wealth and power then there must follow a society of relatively few lords and many vassals. Again let us return to Robin for some insight: “In 'Conservative Thought,' an unjustly neglected essay from 1927, Karl Mannheim argued that conservatives have never been wild about the idea of freedom. It threatens the submission of subordinate to inferior. Because freedom in the lingua franca of modern politics, however, they have had 'a sound enough instinct not to attack' it. Instead they have made freedom the stalking horse of inequality, and inequality the stalking horse of submission. Men are naturally unequal, they argue. Freedom requires that they be allowed to develop their unequal gifts. A free society must be an unequal society, composed of radically distinct and hierarchical particulars.” (1) This leads, by short steps, to the war of 'liberation' against trade unionism in order to free the worker to negotiate alone with his 'lord' as one would confront the almighty on judgment day. It liberates consumers of protection to negotiate alone with his banker over interest rates on his home, auto, or credit card. It 'liberates' the community of protection so that the individual is left to sue the corporate conglomerate to stop the pumping of poisons into his water supply or the ground he stands on. It 'liberates' one to be free to become an 'associate' instead of an employee; it liberates 'privilege' by making democracy aristocratic.
Footnotes:

1.As quoted by Corey Robin, “Out of Place” The Nation June 23, 2008 pg 26.

2.Earlier in the history of the republic, John C. Calhoun, U.S. Senator from South
Carolina and Vice President under Andrew Jackson, would defend slavery using
ancient historical precedents and tradition in an effort to found a republic on blatant principles of political inequality. Such arguments are foreign to the
modern ear and are not used in polite political discourse. Accordingly the conservative must be about the business of constructing a 'populist' veneer
with which to cover his defense of privilege

3. Fitzhugh, George. “Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters”, in Baritz, Loren “Sources of the American Mind” Vol. 1. John Wiley & Sons Inc., New York, New York. 1966. pp 373-378.