March 25, 2015: Send In the Clowns, Smells Like Joe McCarthy, Animated Ignorance.

"Don't you love farce? My fault, I fear
I thought that you'd want what I want, sorry, my dear
But where are the clowns, send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here."
                                 ----Judy Collins "Send In The Clowns" (1)


Query: What looks like Joe McCarthy, talks like Joe McCarthy, acts like Joe McCarthy and smells like Joe McCarthy? Answer: Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

One of the most strident "Birthers" and a Tea-Bagging darling Cruz has, in his short tenure in the Senate managed to outrage not only his natural political opponents, but many of the old-line conservatives within his own party. Author last year of the "partial shut-down" of the Federal Government, a stunt which cost the taxpayer of this country 24 billion dollars, Cruz has proven himself a take-no-prisoners advocate of the hard-wrong ideology. He stands as a sublime example of animated ignorance, malignancy on steroids.

He has been a strident opponent of everything our president stands for, obstructing presidential nominations, undermining treaty negotiations, even joining the "Birthers" in questioning Obama’s country of birth and therefore his citizenship. The delicious irony is, of course, that Cruz himself, like Marco Rubio is foreign born. In this case he was born in Canada. Son of an American citizen he, nevertheless, was not born in this country leading some within his own Tea-bagger movement to question whether he is qualified to become President of the United States.

Cruz, seeking to export the madness that is right-wing Texas politics, chose a carefully orchestrated presentation before a ‘captive’ audience at the citadel of American political reaction, Jerry Farwell’s "Liberty" University. Before a packed house, attendance by the student body required in lieu of fine, Cruz belched forth a full-throated cry to ‘repeal every word of ObamaCare’ as well as institute a litany of reactionary measures including the ‘abolition of the IRS’, a national sales tax, cuts in the social safety net.

One must be careful to heed the wisdom and the advice from one who has been jettisoned by the country of his birth and cast, like so much flotsam upon the ocean currents to wash up upon our shores. Native Americans will warn you that it is, perhaps, not wise to take them in. The ranting of Cruz’s father, Rafael Sr. have become viral on the internet of late giving the country not only a glimpse of the environment in which the Senator was raised, but a clear indication of perhaps why our good neighbor to the north sent them packing. One must approach Cruz with gloves on for the judgement of a displaced national is always suspect be it Ayn Rand, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or Gertrude Stein. Being cast adrift warps one’s judgement and creates a tendency to latch upon whatever foothold one can in you ‘new world’. Cruz, like Arnold Swartznegger, found his new justification in the Republican party; embracing the ideology of the emerging Neo-Conservative movement. It can be a potent combination, an emigre from a neighboring country embracing a pseudo-working class conservative movement....

Cruz, however, is going to have to overcome the early impression he has made on the body politic as being abrasive, and divisive, as well as a cartoon character and a clown. At this point in time it is difficult to say if he will prevail, either by winning the party’s nomination outright or by pulling the rest of the pack to the hard-wrong; or whether he will be seen as a two-dimensional clown and laughed off the national stage. Time will tell.

Meanwhile the horn has sounded and the cast of characters hoping to carry the Rescumlican banner into the next election will soon be getting on the campaign bus. Not since the drunken band of merry men last boarded the bus in Scottville (2) to begin their annual ‘world tour’ have we been promised so many clowns performing together. Get on the bus, next stop: Ludington.

"But where are the clowns
send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here."
____________

(1) http://www.metrolyrics.com/send-in-the-clowns-lyrics-judy-collins.html

(2) I’m here referring to the ‘Scottville Clown Band", a legendary group of inebriated men who march down main streets playing their instruments while dressed in drag. Several of my great uncles were founding members.

August 5, 2012: Foot Soldiers of Fascism, Slumlord Becomes Scumlord, Bitter Irony

“Obama is not Hitler.  It is not the President who would put the state in exclusive service to corporate interests; it is the “Teabaggers”.  It is they who are the foot soldiers of fascism.”

                            ---from the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

I bring up this business with the EGG movement from 1995 by way of illustration.  Like the contemporary “Teabaggers” this group represented a movement long on rhetoric and short on solutions; a movement giving vent to anger and frustration but exhibiting a pervasive ignorance not only of how our world is organized, but of our collective history; a movement purportedly representing the hopes and dreams of hard-working ordinary people, but in fact servicing the narrow interests of a select and wealthy few. 

The most singular issue sparking the emergence of the so-called Ethics in Good Government movement was opposition to zoning.  Ionia County was then one of only 2 remaining counties in the state that had not adopted a county-wide zoning ordinance with such issues left to the local townships to decide and enforce.  No one had proposed county-wide zoning but that didn’t prevent a group of right-wing nuts from launching the movement.  Appearing on the local radio program “Viewpoint”, spokesmen for the group openly cited references to zoning in the 1920 Communist Manifesto as evidence of evil intent. It was, of course obfuscation, a smear.  I don’t think there is such a thing as a 1920 Communist Manifesto. I’ve read the works of Marx and I can testify that nowhere in his writings does the word “zoning” appear. In any case, like old Joe McCarthy, they would level these charges but never produce the documentation.  Nevertheless such nonsense went unchallenged on the air, giving credence to the cretins and further fuelling the fires of fear.  The real problem with zoning was of course the implicit threat such a regimen would impose on the freedom of our slumlord to further exploit and abuse his neighbors.  What the eggheads in the EGG movement refused to understand was the implicit contradiction in their behavior: they thought they were foot soldiers in the cause of justice and freedom, when in fact they were acting in the narrow interests of a cheap-jack real estate hustler.

Fast forward to the present: today we have on our hands a national movement funded entirely by billionaires through their henchmen. The singular issue sparking the so-called “TEA” movement is taxes.  As in Taxed Enough Already, as their placards proclaim.  This movement emerged full-throated in April of 2009 just in time to protest tax deadline day.  Never mind that no one was proposing a tax increase, never mind that the tax code being the object of such protest was that of George W. Bush, never mind that President Obama had just cut the taxes for 95% of the American people. Moreover, the United States ranks 23^rd among the top 30 industrial countries in taxes, and Federal Taxes under Obama have claimed the lowest share of personal income since 1952.  Like the zoning issue in Ionia years before, this was a completely bogus issue designed only to gin up a growing rage that would subsequently be used in the service of greed.

Moreover, like the EGG movement those many years ago, the “TEA” movement has been revealed to be nothing but a so-called “AstroTurf’ movement.   Like the EGG movement it purports to be an entirely grass-roots effort, but is in fact organized and funded for the purpose of servicing the moneyed interests.  Where once only a local slumlord stood behind his spokesman shouting from atop his soap box, now stands the Koch Brothers and other Billionaires through groups like the so called “FreedomWorks” and the “Club for Growth”, working the ropes upon the national stage. The national Scumlords have here replaced the local Slumlord; with the operatives in question behaving none the wiser.  It is a bitter irony.  The populist revolt has been hijacked and put in the service of reactionaries.  Progressivism is threatened by an emerging Regressivism, Reform has taken the form of Reaction in the service of the emerging corporate dictatorship.  None dare declare what stands clearly before their very eyes: protesters in paramilitary camouflage; people showing up to political meetings armed. None dare call the TEA movement what it is.  None dare call it Fascism.

October 21, 2011: Ethos of Being, Whatever He Makes, Lights Out.

“It is a universal rule of nature that a man makes an ethic of whatever he sees in the mirror”
                      —from the ‘Quotations of Chairman Joe’

A man makes an ethic of whatever he makes of himself.  If he is a rich man, he makes an ethic of wealth; if he is a poor man he makes an ethic of Spartan efficiency.  If he is a learned man he makes an ethic of education; if he is uneducated he makes an ethic of the school of “hard knocks”.  If he is a wise man he makes an ethic of wisdom; if he is an ignorant man he makes an ethic of ignorance.  If he is a civil man he makes an ethic of cultured civility; if he is a barbarian he makes an ethic of his own barbarism.

The problem with modern culture, especially American culture, is that the possibilities for “re-creating” oneself are apparently limitless.  One’s freedom to assume identity, that is to “invent” oneself multiplies as the social “constants”, the social “norms” increasingly give way to the latest trends.  I’m not simply speaking here of the current practice of wearing one’s baseball cap backwards, or the pant legs down over the shoes, or the practice of wearing, in the open forum, one’s pants half-way down to the knees in imitation of prison wear.  The problem is deeper than that, for the social norms are now under attack by the emergence of, if you will, a perverse version of George the Greater’s “thousand points of light”. 

You see there are now a thousand voices, each with its own siren song, telling tales of alternate universes.  One can now choose one’s own “music” to the exclusion of all else.One can choose one’s own “religion” by simply inventing a more virulent form of existing ones, branching out to become the “branch Davidians” or another variant on the theme.One can choose one’s own education, opting-out by specializing—to the exclusion of all else-what one chooses to learn.  One can choose one’s own news, one’s own editorial support, one’s own everything.  You see it on the street when the young lad or lass walks in front of your car with the headphones on, listening to god-knows-what and oblivious to nearly everything around including the nearly three thousand pounds of steel about to run them down.. 

But what to make of this world when crisis strikes?  What to make of this world when one is whipsawed by forces one has not taken the time nor made the effort to understand?  Who is to connect these dots that mark the thousand points of light in this otherwise dark universe? Who will instruct us, who will impart to us what we have failed to develop in ourselves? To what mountain will we turn to find that oracle who will explain the world around us?

If you have made an ethic of ignorance, you seek the wisdom of Rush Limbaugh.  Why else would one consult a man who not only flunked out of college but in the process managed to fail every class he took including Ballroom Dancing?  Here is a man who has made an absolute ethic of ignorance and is now getting filthy rich appealing to that segment of society who has done the same. Or, you can turn to the deeply troubled and paranoid Glenn Beck who daily consuls the retreat to the cave as we approach the much heeded end of civilization as we know it.  If you have made an ethic of barbarism you join the modern “Brown Shirts” in the Teabag movement shouting down all civil discussion.  Why else would you join a movement that has made an ethic of nullification and has adopted the nihilist creed that nothing is better than everything else; that no loaf is better than any bread at all.

How do we make sense of this mess? It depends by which star in the sky one sets one’s bearings.  The problem is that the lights are going out in the western sky and will not be lit again in our lifetime. Increasingly they can only be seen against a backdrop of nearly absolute darkness.

February 14, 2011: False Alarms, The Politics of Fear, Stampeding the Great Unwashed

Much has been made by the likes of Ron Paul and his followers in the “Tea-bagger” movement about how the level of our national debt is fast approaching 100% of the annual gross domestic product. This is represented as some kind of ceiling beyond which we cannot go, complete with various doomsday scenarios worthy of revelation.

As the above graph suggests, we have carried high levels of debt relative to the annual gross domestic product several times in our collective history without suffering the kind of doomsday collapse these modern prophets suggest. In fact you will notice that at the end of World War II we accumulated a level of debt equal to about 125% of our GDP or the amount equal to the entire yearly economic output of the country. No one suggested in 1946, as we set about through profligate fornication creating the generation of swine, that we were facing imminent collapse. In fact, judging from the birth rate, the national response was quite the opposite. Debt, in and of itself, even high levels of debt, have no bearing on the state of the national well being.

What differentiates then from now are three salient points. The first is not demonstrated on this graph. In 1946 we owed this debt to ourselves. Today three quarters of the debt is financed from abroad, so interest payment are, in effect, monetary transfers out of the country. The second point is demonstrated by the graph. Close examination reveals a number of interesting points: we emerged from the Revolutionary war with a debt level of about 35% of GDP, high by historical standards. Notice the up-tick in 1860 as we financed the Civil War. Likewise the two world wars of the twentieth century. Notice also how we lowered our debt burden in times of peace–that is until the emergence of Ronald Reagan. Look at the graph from 1980 onward: here you can see the interruption of the upward slope by the Clinton Administration followed by a return to growing deficits. The third point is this: what did we get for all that debt in the last 30 years?
Previously we established our independence and our own economy, we bound up the nation’s wounds, we fought for a new international order bringing in its wake decades of peace and prosperity. The massive debt of the last three decades has produced no such results. Instead we find that our two greatest exports are jobs and capital. I say this by way of pointing out that it is not debt that is at issue here. It is what we are doing with it or, more precisely, what we are not doing with it.


I point this out because one needs to get some perspective on this problem in order to speak reasonably, if not rationally, on the subject. The howlers on the idiot wrong raise this issue so as to create a climate of fear as we approach yet another debt ceiling in which the Congress will have to vote to borrow additional moneys. In order to whipsaw from granting the filthy rich yet another huge tax break, to now cutting 100 billion from domestic spending, paring such programs as Head Start, Pell Grants, and the Home Heating subsidies for the poor, it is necessary to sound yet another false alarm much as Ol Two-Cows would do at the Homeland Security Department in the run up to the 2004 election.

Once again the conservatives resort to the politics of fear in an effort to stampede the great unwashed into gutting the very programs upon which they depend and prevent us from rebuilding our infrastructure and, by so doing, our national economy. It is palpable nonsense.

Footnotes:

The graph depicting the percentage of debt relative to the GDP can be found at:
www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt_chart.html

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product. This measurement, formerly called GNP for Gross National Product, is the sum (measured in dollars) of the total amount of goods and services produced by the national economy annually.

March 1, 2010: A Night at Old Comiskey, Lessons in Demolition, Politics as Spectacle

When at last we had found our seats it was the middle of the 7th inning of the first game of a twi-night doubleheader. Comiskey Park was packed. I hadn't seen it like this since that game with Cleveland way back in 1960—and that was “fireworks” night. People were literally hanging from the rafters. But there was something different about the the old ball yard. I could sense it as I walked among the ragged bare-chested crowd the half mile to the park, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Inside the park I took stock of the situation and things began to take form.

The time: Thursday, July 12, 1979. The place: Comiskey Park, Chicago. The mood: sullen. It was hot—very hot—and it was humid. Draped over the face of the upper deck were sheets upon which were painted “Disco Sucks” and other epiteths to Western Man's most recent cultural achievement. As my eyes swept the arena, I could feel the “thud” of exploding firecrackers, m-80's—the equivalent of a quarter of a stick of dynamite—thrown unto the field, sending ominous reverberations through the surely crowd. As the first game was winding to an end I could feel things getting out of hand. Instinctively I sought the “Box” seats for safety, for gathered here were the lowest elements of Chicago's South Side clearly in search of an EVENT!

The rest, in a manner of speaking, is history. The mob sat resitively through the first game, contenting inself with consuming drugs, seeting off firecrackers, and intimidating ball players. During intermission it joyously engaged in a raucus display as 50,000 rose to their feet singing “Disco Sucks” to the tune of “Disco Duck” serving as a kind of ritual chant imploring distant gods to save them from the likes of Donna Summers and the Brothers Gibb. But, alas, as the box of disco albums was ceremoniously and, I might add, anticlimactically exploded in center field the much heralded event was met with dead silence. For this, Bill Veeck was soon to learn, is not the stuff of which great events are made. Moreover for a crowd that had virtually terrorized two major league teams for nine solid innings, in an absolutely meaningless contest, to be relegated the role of distant spectators was more than an affront. It was, quite simply, a bore. Soon the mob, possessing an almost singular mind, trickled then poured over the railings driving the players and groundskeepers from the field. Here in an ugly display of defiance they had at last siezed control of the games. It was a grand spectacle, possessing all the attributes: humor, pathos, excitement, tension, anger, control and, as one witnessed the defiling of sacred ground once tread upon by the great demigods of baseball more than a full measure of tragedy. For the GAMES had degenerated to THIS! It became clear to me as I watched the mob in ritual dance about the bonfire they had set in center field that a certain perversity pervades the land.

Since the advent of the eight hour day the single most subversive force facing the modern state is not poverty, it is not injustice, it is not technology, nor is it the looming energy crisis or climate change. It IS pure and simple boredom. Boredom is an evil that plagues every paradise. Against boredom the gods themselves struggle in vain. Boredom, moreover, gives birth to though. Thought, born of leisurely contemplation produces, in turn, ideals. Ideals produce dissatifactions and social unrest. Is it any wonder then, that conservatism has waged a ceasless battle, then, to restore the working conditions of the nineteenth century? Thoughts born of leirsure, occuring outside the realm of the corporate state are, by definition, bad thoughts. Moral: all thoughts are bad thoughts. Answer: the masses shall not think. All else follows.

Boredom, that great scourge of mankind, has at last overcome the “Great Society”. Americans have put down their shovels, moved into the suburbs and exurbs, mortgaged their asses and declared that this is the promised land. But now, with the struggle at and end, we are overcome with a collective sense of puposelessness, what our 39th President would come to call “Malaise”. We have become directionless, confused, in a word bored. As the mob at Old Comiskey we have become part of meaningless rituals and unimportant struggles. It is a catharsis that offers no release. The mandarins of the State have intuitively grasped the central problem of our time: Boredom—born of leisure, father of unrest. The answer was at once paradoxical and obvious: if paradise is painful, let's have more paradise! Pain, it has been widely held, is deleterious to thought. It was a solution at once beneficial to both rulers and the ruled: consumerism. The strategy became at first to placate the masses with a veritable cornucopia of consumer goods. But, alas, even this did not suffice for in the immortal words of Mick Jagger “the pursuit of happiness just seems a bore”. We were back to square one. Enter: the GAMES!

De ja vu. We in the West have been here before. A similar crisis faced the ancient Romans. As the aristocracy bought up the land and introduced slave labor, people were uprooted from the soil and gravitated to the large cities in search of livelihood. Soon the State was confronted with large masses of dispossessed, unemployed people wich the Romans called the Proletariate. Given plenty of time to contemplate their station, the Proletariate likewise began to trek upon the subversive road of thought. Dissatifactions grew. They began to adopt strange new religions, to worship different Ceasars. There were rumblings in the streets. The army was brought in. Desperately the leadership groped for a solution and stumbled upon a brilliant strategem: “Let us put an end to this subversion, let us destroy it at its roots”, whispered the leadership to itself. “Let us consume their leisure time and entertain them as well. For it is writ: the masses shall not think. Therefore, let us give them the GAMES”!

At first the spectacles were unassuming. Circuses, freak shows, mock naval battles were organized to placate the Proletariate. But as the masses became sastiated a curious phenomenon developed—a certain perversity overtook the event. The Proletariate began to demand to take part in the spectacle. A certain thirst developed that could only be quenched by blood. Gladiators were brought in and the mob assumed the role of Ceasars, if not the gods themselves, deciding who was to live and who was to die. Here was the grandest spectacle of them all, the martial glory of Imperial Rome grovelling before the feet of the Proletariate! But such sacrifices began to grow costly, whole species of animals gathered from around the known world were sacrificed, and more blood and treasure would be spent in the Coluseum, it was feared than in the conquest of Gaul. But the Roman Senate understood, as modern historians do not, that the military was here facing the most serious, most subversive threat to the realm yet encountered. The games must go on. At last they fell upon an answer: throw a few Christians to the lions. The solution had an efficiency that would please a modern industrial engineer. Here, in one move, not only would competing loyalties be eliminated, but the mob would be placated as well. It was a small enough price to play given Roman sensibilities. Have I been understood? Christianity was not the subversive force Christians and historians have made it out to be. Constantine would prove that soon enough. No, imperial Rome was threatened by a more powerful and elemental force than Christianity—Boredom. It was to alleviate boredome and incidentally to direct the ire of the mob toward the “foreigness” of other creeds that the Christians were thrown to the lions. GRAND SPECTACLE. Enter the GAMES.

America is finding itself in the same crucible of history. With the advent of economic prosperity and a great deal of leisure time the State is confronted with a crisis similar to that faced centuries ago by the ancient Romans. The first solution was, of course, consumerism, an advantage of modern capitalist enterprise not available to the Romans. But, alas, the populace has grown satiated. Only the most recalcitrant now openly hold that the Winnebego and the snowmoble are the end products of civilization; the culmination and ultimate justification for the human experiment. Indeed when America began to lose faith in Buick the corporate heads of state began to tremble. Therefore the mandarins went about presenting us with a new diversion, one patterned after the experience in Rome. Enter the National Football League, the Superbowl and the Political Arena.

Corporate America has for some time now offered us the spectacle of the Super Bowl, and the introduction of professional sports into the fabric of American life gives the masses an opportunity to not only vicariously participate in masculinity, but in glory. It was a similar heady experience felt by the hapless denizens of Rome in years gone by. It is splendid diversion. It is splendid fantasy. But it has its limitations. With the exception of throwing refuse unto the field, garbage and bottles at umpires and judges, or epiteths at the players, the mob cannot participate in the action. But the masses feel frustrated at the limitations of being mere spectators. Like the Roman Proletariate it demands to become part of the action, indeed determine the outcome. It must, in the words of that classic anthem of the modern proletariate gets some “satifaction”.

It has long been held that in America politics is a spectator sport. Indeed it has been said that politics is the largest spectator sport in America. The Presidential election, that quadrennial spectacle is the playoffs and the Super Bowl wrapped into a long melodrama. The masses not only participate as spectators but, as the Roman Proletariate, here decide the outcome. It is here that the greate gladiators of the political stage pit against one another for the favor of the multitude. And, like the gladiators of old, everything now rests on the performance. For the chemistry of the event involves the interaction of the principle players and the crowd. Indeed it is upon the success of the modern gladiator turned politician to inspire the mob—that is to overcome boredom—to fill the emptiness in their lives that the fate of the modern Ceasar now rests. To wit: the single most devastating criticism leveled at Jimmy Carty—he cannot inspire the crowd!

One other parellel with ancient Rome must now be drawn. Like the Roman Proletariate, the American electorate is beginning to develop a distinctive perversity born of the need to be entertained by increasingly spectacular events. In the last 40 years we have seen one president murdered, several assassination attempts, one President forced to quit, one impeached on the most ridiculously tranparent grounds, two lose re-election. We have witnessed “landslide” victories on both the “left” and “Right”. Lets put this in perspective. Watergate was not seen by most Americans as a constitutional crisis. It was not seen as a violation of civil rights or constitutional guarantees, of law or ethics. Watergate was seen by America as pure and simple entertainment. Here faced with a perdiod of minimal political activity, America was swept away by the fascination of high political drama encompassing as it did all the halmarks of a popular pulp novel. Here we bore witness to humor, farce, drama, tragedy, all rolled into one. It was a splendid diversion and a GRAND SPECTACLE. The same could be said of the the Clinton impeachement. And, of course, Ronny....well he was our first television star turned president. The others....Johnson, Ford, Bush the Elder....failed the test and were in due course shown the door.

As I left the grand old ball yard on that dark humid night, I took a deep breath of the sultry air as I passed the line of patty wagons that ringed the arena and gazed over the plains of the mid-west. I thought I could sense in the rolling thunderclaps in the East and the South that in the words of Robert Kennedy these are not ordinary times. Indeed they have not been now for some time. With the proliferation of primaries and caucuses the political process has long been taken over by the masses. With the low voter turn-out in these contests the process has, in due course, been hijacked by single-interest groups and ideoligical purists as each party has turned to “litmus” and “loyalty” tests in a misguided effort to placate the mob. Recently with the help of right-wing talk radio, Fox noise, and corporate funding the town-hall meetingplaces have been ransacked by the so-called “Tea Baggers” employing brown-shirt tactics seeking to silence discussion and debate as payment for their full measure of participation in the GAMES. Herein lies the paradox, too much participation threatens the process, perhaps the republic itself. It has all the ingredients of greek tragedy but promises to be a grand spectacle. With the elections of the likes of Ronny Reagan and Jim Bunning America has already demonstrated a proclivity for confusing celebrity with substance. Now, as with the crowd at Comiskey, the “Teabaggers” and and other assorted brown shirts threaten by taking the field to destroy the very institutions of the republic. And, if recent history is any guide, replace them with mere spectacle. Whatever happens, it promises to be interesting. It sure beats the hell out of two and a half innings of baseball.