November 5, 2011: Return to Custer, A Word about The Word, Pigs Breakfast.

“He that controls language, controls everything”
                  –from the “Quotations of Chairman Joe"

It was during one of my visits to the “farm” (1) that I received one of my great life lessons.

Following the usual talk with grandmother, I had occasion to speak with grandfather and my great-uncle Lionel.  Lionel was, for his time, a learned man; one of the few in the family to have actually walked the halls of higher learning in the early 20^th century.  He was well read and could converse intelligently on nearly any subject from agriculture and applied mechanics to philosophy and religion.  He understood, as those that lit the prairie fire that was the “progressive movement”, that language is everything.

This is a biblical concept and, befitting a descendent of Methodist clergy, an especially Protestant one.  For when God said “let there be light” and, by the power of the word alone, there was created the “big bang” it is a very powerful thing indeed.  But to us mere mortals the power inherent in the ‘word’ assumes other, more modest, manifestations. 

In the temporal world the ‘word’ is a symbol.  The ‘word’ cannot embrace everything; wrap its arms around the entirety. The word ‘carrot’ for instance, is not a carrot.  It is simply a series of symbols in the form of written or spoken letters and sounds that convey the idea of a ‘carrot’.  One cannot see the carrot upon the page or in the ear; one cannot smell it or taste it.  One can only conjure the idea of it as it corresponds to one’s experience in encountering the ‘thing’.  Or, take for instance, the word ‘house’.  What kind of house, a palace, a mansion, a Victorian, a hovel?  What does one mean?  To answer this, a whole dictionary of words to explain the noun or pronoun, be they adjectives to define the noun, or adverbs to describe the action have evolved to give greater clarity and meaning.  For instance, H.C. Brunner describing New York City’s “Shantytown” for “Scribner’s Monthly” in the mid 19^th century had this to say:  “The shanty”, he wrote, “is the most wonderful instance of perfect adaptation of means to an end in the whole range of modern architecture”.  There was not any general method for describing a shanty, “each must be studied by itself” for in the tangle of ramshackle dwellings, “individual combinations are lost in the prevailing lawlessness of line and hue.” The shanty architect said Brunner, “revels in unevenness”. (2) While colorful, and reflecting a certain bourgeois bias, Brunner’s attempt to capture life among New York’s ‘other half’ fails to wrap its arms around the smells, the poverty, the fears, the insecurities in a city where fully a quarter of the adult population were members of gangs.    

The ‘word’, it transpires, is not the same thing for us mere mortals. The ‘word’ is not the thing, the word is only a pale symbol of the thing but in the absence of the genuine article it must stand as substitute. This is why the ‘word’ is constantly subject to interpretation be it Bible or Constitution; for however hallowed the word upon which it is written it is still a pale substitute for the genuine article.  What is meant by “honor thy father” or the 10^th Amendment is left to the interpretation of the larger society at any given time and, more troubling in our age, the individual.  To insure some modicum of consistency a whole series of doctrines, reference materials, bodies of law and interpretations have been put forward over the centuries establishing various “traditions” in which to put the original “word” into some relevant context.  To this end certain words assume certain meanings in the social traditions assuring that discussion and debate occur within the generally understood boundaries of those traditions be they religious, cultural or national. 

This was the meaning behind the question posed to me by my great Uncle as he sat, a mere 100 pounds of swollen joints, (3) in his wheelchair behind his desk in the living room of the old farmhouse. 

“Tell me Joe” he asked (as if to say you’re a college boy now, you should know this), “what’s the difference between a contradiction and a paradox?” 

“I’m not sure,” I replied.  A look of resignation emerged followed with a touch of mild disappointment. Then quickly his eyes brightened and a smile crossed his face as he saw an opportunity to impart a lesson to the emerging lad. 

“A contradiction is when something appears to be false and is false”, he said.

“A paradox is when something appears false and is true.” 

“Ah”, said I, recognizing a certain mastery of language but uncertain as to its full meaning.

It took years to understand that full meaning of that little exchange: however one defines the terms one must be careful about the use thereof, for each term has a specific and a general meaning depending upon the context.  Carelessness, he seemed to be saying, sows confusion. He meant more than that of course, but it would take much longer to see all the ramifications therein.  To use terms interchangeably, carelessly, can be more than confusing it can be dangerous.

Later Lionel’s brief lesson would be reinforced by admonitions from professors not to use Totalitarian, for instance, as a substitute for Authoritarian, for they are not the same animal. 

These are lessons to heed, if only imperfectly, as one goes about conducting public discourse.

In this context there is nothing more ridiculous than Glen Beck standing before a blackboard equating communism and fascism. Why anyone would seek counsel from someone who, like Limbaugh, has chosen to elect himself out of an education is beyond me.  To equate Obama with Hitler and Stalin in the same breath or to equate Islam with communism is to do violence against the language that approaches rape.  It is either a deliberate smear or the wailing of a lunatic or both, but in seeking to destroy the meaning and context of the terms, Beck and his ilk go about sowing the seeds of confusion so as to create fear and, by so doing, stampede the next election.

Watching Beck I learned, finally, the rest of the lesson taught so long ago in Custer: making a pig’s breakfast of the language is more than confusing, it is dangerous.

________________

(1)               (1)  See post of December 15, 2010 for discussion of the “farm”

(2)               (2)  Brunner, H.C., “Shantytown” Scribner’s Monthly Vol. 20 pp. 855-859

(3)  Great uncle Lionel suffered from Rheumatoid arthritis for most of the latter part of his life.

(3)               (4)  Happy Guy Fawkes Day

(1)             

October 30, 2011: Imagine There’s No Pizza, If 9 were 6, Thin Crust and Red Meat.

"Cain performed "Imagine There's No Pizza", a gospel-flavored parody of the John Lennon songs "Imagine" and "Give Peace a Chance", at an Omaha Press Club event in 1991. A video of this performance became popular during his 2012 campaign. "(1)  This, according to Wikipedia Cain performed with a group of “female backup singers while he wore white preacher’s robes”.  Let’s take a look at this erstwhile Rescumlican presidential wannabee and see how he cuts the pie.

Herman Cain emerges unto the presidential stage boasting a background as businessman and radio talk show host, both of which immediately disqualify him from further consideration.   Let’s look at the Business record:
“At age 36, Cain was assigned in the 1980s first to analyze and manage 400 Burger King stores in the Philadelphia area. At the time, Burger King was a Pillsbury subsidiary. Under Cain, his region posted strong improvement in three years. According to a 1987 account in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Pillsbury's then-president Win Wallin said, "He was an excellent bet. Herman always seemed to have his act together."  At Burger King, Cain "established the BEAMER program, which taught our employees, mostly teenagers, how to make our patrons smile" by smiling themselves. It was a success: "Within three months of the program's initiation, the sales trend was moving steadily higher."^[34]

His successes at Burger King prompted Pillsbury to appoint him president and CEO of another subsidiary, Godfathers Pizza. Cain arrived on April 1, 1986, and told employees, "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke. We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everyone else that we will survive." Cain, over a 30-month period, reduced the company from 640 stores to 563 . As a result of his efforts, Godfather's Pizza sales were reduced from $275 million in 1986 to $242.5 million in 1988^. Godfather's Pizza was performing poorly, and had slipped in ranks of pizza chains from 3rd in 1985 to fifth in 1988 . In a leveraged buyout in 1988, Cain, Executive Vice-President and COO Ronald B. Gartlan and a group of investors, bought Godfather's from Pillsbury. Godfather's sales remained level with Cain as CEO, ending at $265 million for 540 stores in 1996, when he resigned.” (2)

So for all the “smiling” introduced by Cain he enjoyed modest success whilst at Burger King but nevertheless presided over a contraction at Godfather’s Pizza resulting in the closing of stores and the reduction in annual earnings.  Imagine another cheerleader in charge of the national destiny!

One must approach Pizza men with gloves on for the level of ignorance is truly threatening to the republic.  I am reminded of Tom Monihan taking ownership to the Detroit Tigers in the mid 1980’s.  He immediately replaced the retiring Jim Campbell with the University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembeckler.  How a college football coach would be suitable as general manager for a professional major-league baseball team only Monihan could discern.  The fact is that it wasn’t a very good fit.  Within a few short years the Tigers would begin that long slide that led to the eventual loss of nearly 120 games in a single season and would take over a decade to rectify.  In fact, things got so bad, that the league contemplated for a time taking over the team while Monihan still ran the show.  One of Domino Pizza’s executives tried to explain the situation to a reporter late in the Monihan era. “You don’t understand my boss”, he said.  “Whenever Monihan is confronted with a problem his answer it to put more pepperoni on it”.  Therein lies the problem.

Simple solutions for simple minds.  The question is which head holds the mind of the simpleton, the erstwhile candidate or the collective cranium of his following? Perhaps it is one or the other, perhaps it is both.

For our purposes let’s review the 9-9-9 proposal set forth by Cain in the Rescumlican debates as the leitmotif of this attempt to simply weigh the product down with more pepperoni. The "centerpiece" of Cain's presidential campaign has been the "9-9-9 plan", which would replace all current taxes (including the Payroll Tax, Capital Gains Tax, and the Estate Tax) with 9% business transaction tax; 9% personal income tax rate, and a 9% federal sales tax. According to Cain, corporations would be able to deduct costs of goods sold (provided the inputs were made in America) and capital expenditures, but not wages, salaries and benefits to employees. Deductions, except charitable giving, would be eliminated. The federal sales tax would not apply to used goods. Cain also said that the 9-9-9 Plan would lift a $430 billion dead-weight burden on the economy..

Herman Cain stated the following summary about the 9-9-9 Plan:
“Our current economic crisis calls for bold action to truly stimulate the economy and Renew America back to its greatness. The 9-9-9 Plan gets Washington D.C. out of the business of picking winners and losers, using the tax code to dole out favors, and dividing the country with class warfare. It is fair, simple, transparent and efficient. It taxes everything once and nothing twice. It taxes the broadest possible base at the lowest possible rates. It is neutral with respect to savings and consumption,capital and labor, imports and exports and whether companies pay dividends or retain earnings.^” (3) This, of course, is pure balderdash.  It is neither fair, transparent or efficient and it does not tax everything once and nothing twice.  My wages, for instance, are taxed at the workplace, at the supermarket, and with several value-added taxes as goods make their way through the production and distribution chain. Wealth, of course, walks away from the table unburdened.

According to the analysis of Howard Gleckman the Tax Policy Center,
“When you get right down to it, Cain’s [9-9-9] plan is a 25 percent flat-rate consumption tax — not all that different from the FAIR tax that he says is his ultimate goal. This tax would be paid three times: first on wage income, again at the cash register as a sales tax, and yet again by businesses on their sales minus their cost of goods and services. For tax junkies, the first is a flat tax. The second is a retail sales tax and the third a business transfer tax. But they are all consumption taxes.

Although Cain has spoken about having designated 'empowerment zones' wherein a lower percentage, such as 3%, is paid instead, apart from this consideration, some have called Cain's plan more regressive than current policy, thinking it would raise taxes for most households, but cut them for a majority of those with the highest income.’

“However,” (the article continues) “this analysis of Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan seems to have forgotten payroll taxes. With payroll taxes the employer and the employee split the tax.” This agruement is, of course, bogus. Once again, to wit: All of the value generated to pay the taxes is created by the worker.  The employer simply hijacks his portion of the tax burden as part of the wealth he ‘expropriates” from the worker and affixes his name to it.  Ask the proponents of these schemes if they really think the capitalist will give back all that is currently being withheld instead of simply pocketing it.  The fact is these costs are duly factored in to the “costs of labor” by any business accountant worth his salt belying in the language the actual fact that the entirety of the tax burden is in fact borne by labor.
 
“In a October 18, 2011 debate several of the other contenders for the GOP nomination attacked the plan, with candidate Rick Santorum  referencing the Tax Policy Center's claim that 84% of Americans would pay more and that the plan would entail "major increases in taxes on people," a charge Cain has refuted ^{." (3)}


Even Republicans, it seems, can spot a red herring when they see it or, perhaps, more pepperoni that the pie can hold. The 9-9-9 plan could just as easily been 6-6-6 for all the care that has been taken in considering the effect it would have on the commonweal.  Beware of the Pizza man bearing gifts for you will be left with thin crust and as much red meat profit demands.

As a simple litmus test ask yourself why, when these proposals are floated, do not the wealthy bankers, hedge fund managers, holders of derivatives and credit default swaps, or other icons of the rich and powerful howl in agony?  The answer is that these proposals are their proposals. (4)  Pete DuPont made the mistake of putting them on the table himself and, by so doing, being altogether too transparently self-serving.  Now they hire the political ignoramus, or the well-healed shill to do it for them.  Pimps for the Grand O’l Prostitute, the GOP., of which Herman Cain is only the latest in a long sorry line.
______________

1.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Cain

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

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-9-9_plan

4. Note that Cain has worked for the Koch brothers “ Americans for Prosperity” a wrong-wing stink tank funded by the Koch family for the purposes of furthering greed in America.  This is yet another attempt to run regressive tax proposals up the pole in the name of “fairness” and “prosperity” when in fact it is nothing other than an effort to relieve the Koch’s of any remaining stigma attached to the concept of “Noblesse Oblige”.

October 29, 2011: Fool Me Two Times, Arms around Ignorance, Some Things Never Change

 "Fool me two times girl
fool me twice today
fool me two-times baby
i'm going away
fool me two-times yeah
once for tomorrow
once just for today"
         ----Parody of  The Doors "Love Me Two Times."


How does one get one’s arms around such ignorance?  Where does one begin?  At MSNBC and Current TV as well as the publications of Rachel Maddow and Al Franken, a veritable cottage industry has arisen to try to answer the outrageous assertions coming hourly from the “idiot wrong”.

This headlong drive to stupidity, this “will to ignorance” finds many manifestations, most recently in the form of tax proposals by Rescumlican wannabees Governor Rick Perry of Texas and former Pizza executive Herman Cain.  These proposals, a 20% “flat tax” put forward by the Texan and the so-called 9-9-9 proposal by Mr. Cain are derivatives of the old rescumlican push to eliminate whatever progressivity still exists in the tax code in favor of the seemingly “fair” flat tax.  For our purposes, I’m republishing a previous post on the then so-called “fair tax” proposal that was floated in the 2008 election and championed by yet another conservative neophyte Governor Huckabee of Arkansas.  Here, then, is how it looked four years ago.  Some things never change:

“Why is it that every time one sees a fundamentalist preacher turned politician campaigning for the Presidency he has the Bible in his left hand, his right index finger in your face and a tax cut for the rich in his back pocket? It is difficult to say, perhaps overweening ambition, perhaps the reluctance or the inability to understand something as complex as economics, perhaps intellectual laziness, perhaps a simple willingness to be a shill for wealth. But in any case we are now presented with another such spectacle this time in the form of Mike Huckabee, our very own Elmer Gantry.

He arrived late to the Presidential sweepstakes and took up the twin causes of God and good government in an effort to gin up the support of the fundamentalist wrong that heretofore were seen to have controlled the proceedings. Initially his message was a welcome variant from the old standard in which Christ was seen not as the apostle of greed but became, briefly in the hands of the Reverend Mike, once again the God of compassion. Accordingly Mike spoke eloquently, if only briefly, of our collective need to tend to the least among us. But his campaign, after Iowa, gained little traction with victories limited by religious and sectional boundaries. In order to breathe new life into his flagging effort, the Huckster has now transformed himself into a full-throated champion of the so called “Fair Tax”, not so much to win the nomination but to pick up the broken petard of Pat Robertson and become the new Champion of the idiot right.

Accordingly he is now out canvassing the country saying that “in Arkansas if it can’t be fixed with duct tape it cannot be fixed, and the tax code and the IRS cannot be fixed with duct tape”. There you have it in a ‘nut’ shell. If it cannot be fixed with duct tape it must go. Well Mike, I hate to break the news but you cannot fix the schools with duct tape, you cannot fix the military with duct tape, you cannot fix the roads with duct tape…..shall we get rid of those too? Talk to any heating and cooling contractor and you will learn that in fact one cannot fix anything with duct tape, not even ductwork. But it is by these standards that the Huckster wages his war to rid us of the onerous Internal Revenue Service.

No one, especially a progressive, is about to defend the present system of how we tax ourselves in these United States. The present tax code is as close to a ‘flat’ tax as we have seen in generations, with nearly all the progressivity having been taken out of it. But the problem of taxation in America is not that we are being taxed too much, for we rank near the bottom in overall taxation among industrial countries. It is that the near elimination of the graduated income tax of our forefathers has produced a society that has increasingly become more bifurcated between great wealth and the struggling rest of us. This tax proposal, coming as it does on the abject failure of a straight out ‘flat’ tax proposed by the likes of Pierre DuPont in his Presidential campaigns, is even more regressive. It would move the tax burden increasingly from the wealthy unto the backs of the working middle and lower classes; increasing the taxation on work while nearly eliminating the taxation of wealth.

When our forefathers introduced the graduated income tax they understood, as the ‘boomers’ apparently do not, that it is better to tax wealth than tax work. Reasoning from the tenets of Adam Smith, the founder of modern free-market capitalism, that work produces wealth, our forefathers rightly concluded that it would be counterproductive to tax work since it was through work that all wealth originates. Better, they said, to tax wealth at a higher rate. By taxing wealth at higher rates it leaves work with a relatively lighter share of the overall burden, freeing it to generate more wealth. This reasoning took the form of the distinction, in the terminology of our ancestors, between what was called “earned” and “unearned” income. Better they said to tax at higher rates unearned income (income from rents, interest and profits), than earned income (income from wages). Accordingly heavier taxes were laid upon the upper income tax bracket (in the 90% range), capital gains and estate taxes. The result was a more egalitarian society, one in which the fruits of our collective labor were generally shared, a society in which we witnessed the explosive growth of a large industrial middle class.

But the ‘Boomers’, the grand recipients of our forefathers collective wisdom, saw nothing in the lessons taught that we felt obliged to learn. Accordingly we have followed the siren song of greed introducing one tax ‘reform’ after another from the tax limitation craze set off by Howard Jarvis in California in the late ‘70s, to Ronald Reagan and the Republican assault on the graduated income tax, to the several flat tax proposals, and efforts to eliminate outright the capital gains and estate taxes. Let us take a brief look at the latest entry in the tax ‘reform’ craze put forward by the conservative stink tanks. The effort, such as it is, requires more from us than it deserves.

John Kenneth Galbraith once termed economics the ‘dismal science’, and although he was referring to the writings of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo, he can also be read to understand that approaching a study of economic theory or practice is like going to the dentist. Accordingly one approaches the study of the “Fair Tax” with all the enthusiasm of facing root canal work.

The idea came out of the bowels of Americans for Fair Taxation as a simple shell game in which the tax burden would be shifted from income taxes on profits and wages to what is, in effect, a national sales tax. Now even a flat rate tax of say 10 or 12%, as our friend Pierre DuPont proposed, has at least the appearance of ‘progressivity’ inasmuch as that the more one makes the more taxes one pays. But the so called “Fair Tax” proposes a 23% sales tax on all goods and services. It would eliminate taxes on savings and investments, all estate taxes, and virtually every other form of taxation. The result is that the tax burden would be shifted entirely onto consumption. What this means is that there becomes an inverse relation between income and the effective level of taxation. That is the lower your income the higher the percentage of your income to taxation. Those at the lowest levels, required as they are to spend virtually every cent on necessities, would pay the going rate. The higher one’s income the more can be put aside for saving and investment which, under this scheme, is shielded from taxation. Yes say the proponents but when it is withdrawn it is spent and taxes are paid on it. No say we critics because the interest on this money is earned and compounded while in the bank and is not subject to taxation. “Unearned” income, which is income nonetheless, is not subject to taxation unless and until it is spent. Suppose it is not spent, suppose it is left to constantly multiply itself over a period of time. Yes when it finally is withdrawn from the bank to make some purchases it is taxed but in the meantime it is tax free. Wages are not so lucky. One is presented then with the spectacle of the worker being taxed at every turn while the investor merely clips his coupons and watches his money grow.

What the inventors of this scheme have done is take the entire cost of government and raise the money by levying a consumption or sales tax. The proposal, with the requisite misleading moniker of ‘Fair Tax’ has the appearance, like the flat tax, of fairness. Everyone pays the same tax, right? Wrong. Everyone pays the same tax, as now, at the checkout counter, but not everyone pays the same effective tax. Whole parts of the economy, principally the investment community, earn money but are exempt from taxation. So for instance, the poor slob earning $15,000. a year pays an effective tax at the going rate of 23% while the billionaire, because so much of his money is off earning income at compounded rates tax free, pays an effective rate of less than 2%.

What makes this shell game so appealing is the deceptively simple complexity of it. It reminds me, in a perverse way, of the objections modern Republicans raise to the idea of returning to a graduated income tax. “The rich already pay the lion’s share of income taxes”, they point out parroting the talking points of the Republican National Committee. The Rich do pay nearly two thirds of all income tax in this country. But that is precisely the problem. The fact that the upper ten percent carry such a burden is not due to the unfairness of the present system or to the horrors of reinstituting the tax code of John Kennedy or even Jimmy Carter. It is due, quite simply, to the fact that the wealthy now own such a large share of the economic pie. No the answer is not to lower taxes on the all too heavily burdened upper classes, it is instead to raise those taxes and return a greater share of the wealth to those who labored to produce it in the first place. What is needed is a candidate for President to look the American people in the eye and tell them that what we want to see is the middle class paying 80% of the income taxes, because under this administration the middle class will control 80% of the wealth.

There are other problems with this so-called "fair tax" proposal:

There is the question of the effective tax rate. Proponents say that it is 23% but for the scheme to be income neutral—that is for it to generate as much money into the federal treasury as the current system—the effective tax on goods and services would be at least 30% and, according to the President’s Advisory Panel on Tax Reform, as much as a 34% in order to fund government at present levels. In fact according to economist William Gale of the Brookings Institution taxation at the 23% rate would blow a 7 trillion dollar hole in the budget over 10 years and he projects a more realistic rate of 31% or higher in order to reach present levels of funding.(seehttp://money.cnn.com/2005/09/06/pf/taxes/consumptiontax_0510/index.htm) This new tax would be levied at time of purchase on new homes, rent, interest on credit cards, mortgages and car loans, doctor bills, utilities, gasoline (current taxes would not be repealed) legal fees, ad nauseum.

Conservative radio talk-show host Neil Boortz contends that there will be a 22% reduction in prices as companies will be able to produce and sell goods and services cheaper because they would no longer be required to withhold taxes. This is a blanket admission, by one of the scheme’s principal proponents, that by passing the savings on to the consumer wages will in effect be cut by at least 22%. In other words the money now being withheld would not be returned to the worker but would instead be passed on to the consumer who would then realize the savings when the product is purchased. For the worker, on the other hand, the tax burden remains but must now be paid at the check out counter. The tax must be paid, albeit at the reduced price, not with one’s old ‘gross’ income but with one’s old ‘net income’ that is what was previously left after the old IRS got done with it. Assuming that all of the savings are passed on to the consumer this is at best a simple economic wash. No real savings emerges.

Now either prices increase or wages must fall. Either the employer pockets the monies formerly withheld and passes the savings on to the consumer in which case it is a dead wash—if, and it’s a big if, all of said savings are recycled back to the worker as consumer. The worker is then confronted with a giant leap in retail prices. If the schemers allow us to keep all our earnings and we have all of our former paycheck in hand then prices we will face will be as high as 34% greater. In any case the system, as presented, is a wash. The proponents contend that it will raise as much money as the present system. The question is why make the change?
The answer lies in the hidden agendas. Remember these are the same folks that have been toying with the tax code now for nearly a generation, killing with a thousand cuts the golden goose given us by our ancestors. It began at the 1976 Democratic National Convention when Jimmy Carter, as he accepted his party’s nomination for the Presidency, called the American tax code a “disgrace to the human race.” The problem facing the nation at the time was that the tax code as it had evolved in the postwar era had not been adjusted for inflation. Greater numbers of working Americans were now lifted, by the hyperinflation of the era, into higher tax brackets fuelling a nation-wide tax revolt. Carter in calling for reform gave voice and legitimacy to this growing concern. Instead of simply adjusting the tax code for inflation the Democrats stalled and it was left to Ronald Reagan to do the reforming.

Posturing as a progressive Reagan, much as ‘Ol Two-Cows would do two decades later, put conservative stink tanks in overdrive spinning ‘tax reform’ that had the veneer of being progressive but in effect shifted the tax burden increasingly from wealth to work. Accordingly they cut the highest tax brackets from 72% to 35%; they cut the capital gains tax in half, made similar reductions in the estate tax. They increased Social Security withholding taxes and cut federal revenue sharing meaning that state and local governments, funded on flat rate income or sales taxes, were left to make up the difference. This had the effect of further shifting taxation over the entire spectrum from the graduated income to more regressive forms of taxation. To add insult to injury they eliminated the exemptions for consumer loans, most medical bills, and other previous exemptions that the middle class had enjoyed so as to raise the needed revenues. The result, as has been noted by Republican turned independent Kevin Phillips, is that there has been a growing gap between rich and poor and the middle class, now owning a smaller share of the national economy than at any time since before 1929, is shrinking relative to the rest of the economy. The economic high tides of the 80’s and 90’s did not, as Reagan had promised, raise all boats; and under the maladministration of ‘Ol Two-Cows, over 5 million have slipped through the now tattered safety net into poverty. It is from advocates such as these that the latest incarnation of ‘tax reform’ in the shape of the so called ‘fair tax’ comes. The question poses itself: why trust them?
The shell game gets complicated. The proposal calls for a “Prebate” program in which those at the lowest levels will be reimbursed for taxes paid giving the act a ‘populist’ veneer but this would ensure, under a revenue neutral standard, that the middle class will bear a greater share of the burden. And, to be fair, the proposal does for the first time shift social security funding in such a way as to make the rich belly up to the bar and pay more. But the fact remains that this is perhaps the most regressive tax proposal to ever have reached the national political debate since early in the nineteenth century. It is a shell game in which wealth walks away from the table nearly scot-free.

Nor does the ‘Fair Tax’ eliminate the IRS as the Huckster would have us believe. Some agency, however named, will have to collect the taxes. Taxes, in the new form would simply be collected not by the employer but by the merchant. How the retail industry will react to this burden is unclear. This proposal, by their own admission, will not cut the overall tax burden it will simply shift who will pay it. To suggest otherwise is to hint at a hidden agenda in which the real purposes are to simultaneously cut taxes on wealth and cut government revenue so as to further savage governance. It gets harder to fund the OSHA or the Consumer Protection Agency, when funding has gone dry. Whatever the real intent, one smells a rat under the kitchen sink.

It is doubtful that neither the Huckster nor Neil Boortz has studied Econ 101. If they had they would be able to recognize so obvious an economic shell game. Let us give them the benefit of the doubt and put this present misunderstanding down to a lack of proper schooling. To assume otherwise is to understand that they have become mere shills for great wealth, mere apologists for their corporate paymasters, and mere pimps for the GOP-- the Grand Old Prostitute.

In the immortal words of ‘Ol Two-Cows’, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me, fool me three times, ‘won’t get fooled again’. No! No! “

                                                                                                                                

For another assessment of the impact of the “Fair Tax “proposal see:
http://www.factcheck.org/taxes/unspinning_the_fairtax.html

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.

October 9, 2011: Judgment of Mere Mortals, Will to Ignorance, In Service of Villians

“It is in the nature of things that the relative fitness for any claim to deity is left to the considered judgment of mere mortals.”
                   -- –From the “Quotations of Chairman Joe”

And so it has been throughout history, this relationship between governors and the governed; for the power of the elected has always been determined by the acquiescence of the electors.  This was the truth revealed by Thomas Hobbes who was forced into exile because he chose to defend the crown for all the wrong reasons.  Reasoning that the “state of nature” was, in his words, “mean, brutish and short”, he concluded that order was restored not by divine decree but by what could be called “gang rule.”  The King, therefore, received his legitimacy from the “gang”.  The “Leviathan”, as Hobbes called the emerging modern state, simply was another form of gang rule.  Notice, however, the emergence of the concept of “popular sovereignty” in it’s however convoluted form.  For rule by consent of the “gang” instead of “divine right” not only earned him an exile to the Netherlands but a place among the philosophes along with John Locke, Rousseau and Voltaire as leading advocates  of the emerging divinity of the popular will. 

The “people” have always had the power over the anointed, it is simply a question of whether they choose to exercise it and, if so, how.  As it is with any of the gods, so it is with kings, that when they no longer serve useful they are summarily called before the assembled and dismissed.  And so Zeus and Zoroaster, Aphrodite and Thor have gone the way of Louis XVI and Louis Napoleon; except in Britain, of course.

Electors have, as it were, vast power and in the modern democratic state these powers are duly extended into every facet of life: consumer choices, career opportunities, political preferences, and educational investments, choices over everything from presidents to toilet paper.  These choices offer a vast array of possibilities not the least of which is to give freedom to the headlong urge to ignorance.  A “will to ignorance” to paraphrase Nietzsche.

I first discovered this phenomenon shortly after graduating from college.  I was talking with my sister about some subject and brought up Mark Twain.  “Who,” she asked? 
“Mark Twain”, I replied.  “Who’s that” she responded.  “Didn’t you read him in American Literature Class” I asked?  After all we graduated from the same High School only a few years apart.  “We didn’t have to take American Literature” she said.  Upon close examination many of the old requirements had gone by the boards in favor of “feel good” classes like “Home and Family living”. 

What the preceding posts indicate is a growing structural ignorance based upon the fragmentation of the marketplace (especially the media), and the specializations of knowledge as a function of modern science.  This has been exasperated by the growing exercise of power by the electors to not only voice their will through increasing use of recall and referendum balloting but to intentionally and purposefully exercise their ‘god-given’ right to be ignorant.

It begins in school which now gives the emerging citizen the ‘right’ to opt-out of an education.  It continues into adulthood by exercising one’s “right” to opinion based on skewed empirical evidence, or no evidence at all.  One can now choose to opt-out of the requirements of informed citizenship as one can now choose “news” based on one’s existing prejudices, or ideological leanings.  The result of all this fragmentation is a pervasive alienation expressing itself in raging impotence as the great unwashed struggle unsuccessfully to get their collective arms around what it is that is being done to them. Self-interest has, in due course been separated from “enlightened” self-interest, for “enlightened” we are no more.  The result has been the folly of the brown-shirt “ teabag” movement spouting “populist” rhetoric in the service of villians.

September 6, 2011: Towers of Babble, Narrow- Casting, Mr. Peepers on Drugs.

These trends, in industrial and academic specialization and fragmentation of knowledge, have been further exasperated by the fragmentation of the mediums of communication creating, in effect, modern Towers of Babel.

Previously, there were only three major television and radio networks.  What passed for “news” concerning the unfolding of contemporary events was filtered each weeknight into three separate evening half-hour broadcasts.  Because one could only fit a certain number of “stories” into the twenty-odd allotted minutes, the network newscasts quickly began to resemble each other, each covering the main stories of the day and, because of strict “equal time” provisions imposed by the F.C.C., requiring equal air time for opposing points of view.  Great effort was made to keep commentary out of the evening news.   The result was a rather bland but straightforward presentation of the day’s events.

No matter.  The idiot wrong,  and their “libertarian” fellow-travelers, soon began to give voice to the criticism (originating from the bowels of organizations like the John Birch Society) that the media had a liberal “bias”.   So pervasive did this view become that I can remember that when working for a local pharmacist in the mid sixties that Bob would regularly complain of David Brinkley’s so-called liberalism.  After Brinkley passed it was revealed that he was in fact not a liberal at all, but a libertarian.  For those of us on the left, one could sense in Brinkley’s occasional snide remarks about the workings of social programs that he was no liberal, but for the national audience prodded by the rumblings on the wrong, it was quite otherwise.  So began our national confusion over media and politics.

Then, just in time for the Regan “Revolution”, came cable T.V. and with it not only an explosion in the number of television channels but Ted Turner’s idea of having a 24 hour news broadcast.  At first it was bland enough but as CNN spun off CNN Headline News, and as Rupert Murdock, given citizenship and entry into the American media market, bought out Fox News major corporate moguls, and the ideologues in their pay, began to envision a means by which an alternate reality could be imposed upon the body politic.  And so, broadcast journalism began to morph into a more entertaining but also more vitriolic and ideologically driven enterprise.  The consequences of increasing the number of broadcast channels as well as the number of news outlets is that the industry went from being a broadcast to becoming a “narrow-cast” industry.  That is, the national audience was now broken up into increasingly smaller subsets or fragments.  What followed was that to be successful each broadcast had to be “tailored” to meet the needs of an increasingly narrow and smaller niche of the larger community.  Enter ideology.

The same phenomenon had already been occurring in radio over the previous decade.  Previously F.M. radio was limited by the number of radio receivers that could pick up their broadcasts.  Accordingly, in my youth, F.M. had few broadcast channels and was known primarily for broadcasting classical music and, later, National Public Radio.  Only a few “highbrows” invested in the technology because the content was so limited.  Then sometime in the early 1970's auto manufacturers began to install radios in automobiles that would receive not only A.M. but F.M. broadcasts and, because of the superiority of sound  that F.M. produced, there was an explosion of the number of F.M. stations across the country.   The joke at the time was that previously if a station-owner wanted to compliment his A.M. facility with an F.M. tower he would only need fifty cents and two box tops to get an F.M. license.  Back in the “day”, as it were, A.M. was top dog and F.M. was just an afterthought.  No more.

By the mid 1970's newly emerging F.M. stations began to take over virtually every major market leaving the old A.M. stations with almost nothing.  Why, after all, would one chose to listen to A.M. when the alternative sound was so clearly superior, begging the question: “why was the industry built around A.M. in the first place?  To answer the problem of how one could keep the A.M. end of the operation profitable enough to at least pay it’s bills, the industry fell upon the palliative of “talk” radio.  Soon across the nation major figures began to emerge like Larry King who would fill the airwaves with talk, talk, talk.

By the time Cable T.V. began to emerge as a major new industry the path had already been blazed in the much older radio format.  With the emergence of over 100 new cable programing outlets soon television began to reconfigure itself along the “narrow-casting” model.  Programs appealing to specialized, rather than broad, demographics began to appear.  Children’s networks, music networks, sports channels, talk channels, health and fitness channels, each designed for a special “segment” of the audience determined by income, age, sex, ethnicity.

Let us stand back and draw the contrast.  Previously, for instance, each broadcast morning was given over to first the “Today” show or another network’s version of it, then to children’s programing like “Captain Kangaroo” or some other network’s version of that.  As the day progressed came the noon news, then the afternoon soaps, then the kids programming in time for the return home from school, soon to give way to the nightly news broadcasts.  You could change channels, but you could rarely change content, for the broadcast industry, as any industry, is imitative.  In any case no network wanted to be the first to abandon the “national” audience.  The result was that through the oft-cursed “media” we experienced the equivalent of being almost constantly drawn into a huge “town-hall”.  Our experience was a collective experience.

To put this into perspective one has only to reflect upon a typical Saturday morning.  In those days it was nearly impossible to turn on the television before noon on Saturday and not see a childrens cartoon program.  One simply had no alternatives.  Now you may object, and point out how stultifying this could be.  Perhaps, but there was also another side to the equation.  I remember as I was emerging from advanced adolescence into young manhood that I would come downstairs to sit before the television with my then little brother Stevie who was, at the time, all of about 3 or 4 years of age.  We would turn to our favorite program “Underdog” and sit down and watch it together and, as the program would begin, go through the orations of the opening lines: “...not bird, nor plane, nor even frog...just little-‘ol-me...Underdog”.  This was duly recited the way my young brother then pronounced “Underdog” as “Underdawd”.  We would both end the oration with a big laugh.

Programing was structured to appeal to the largest possible audience.  In this case to the youth it was an action cartoon, to the emerging adult the spectre of Wally Cox (who had already made a reputation on television as “Mr. Peepers”) as a Super Hero was, of course, delicious.  But to a “Boomer” in his emerging prime the idea that our hero would gain his power only by taking a “magic super-energy pill” was simply grand.  Here truly was, as they said at the time, “better living through chemistry”.  What we had here was a concept called “broadcasting” in which the nation daily gathered around the television in hopes of catching a glimpse of it’s own reflection and, perhaps, to occasionally peer out unto the world.

All of this was undone by the re-applications of previous technologies and the introduction of new technologies in the seventies and eighties.  With the re-introduction of F.M. radio and the emergence of Cable Television the broadcast industry began an evolution, or devolution if you will, from a “broadcast” to a “narrow-cast” industry fragmenting the national audience into it’s thousands of constituent parts.  Sitting before the “Tube”, the modern “light of the world, no longer a “community” experience.  Nor, for that matter was tuning in the radio.  Increasingly the broadcast medium no longer brought us together, but began to drive us apart.  The broadcast towers were becoming Towers of Babel. 
                              

September 4, 2011: Dumb and Dumber, A More Perfect Citizen, The Death of Liberal Man.

The preceding column was written well over 30 years ago when I was a young man.  Unfortunately, the ensuing decades have not brought improvement..  In fact, it can be argued, America has become “dumb and dumber”.

It is often surprising what men, especially great men, would choose to be best remembered.  While visiting the “Hermitage”, Andrew Jackson’s plantation just northeast of Nashville, Tennessee some years back one walks out in the garden and there one encounters the tomb of the seventh President of the United States.  Inscribed upon the marble is not “President” Andrew Jackson but “General” Andrew Jackson.  Similarly, when asked what he did in his life that he wanted to be best remembered, Thomas Jefferson also did not cite his Presidency.  Nor, surprisingly, did he point to the “Declaration of Independence”.  Nor did he refer to the religious freedom laws of Virginia.  Instead he cited his role in founding the University of Virginia as his single most important contribution to the greater society.

One can make too much of the presumed intelligence and wisdom of any class of people, the eighteenth and nineteenth century yeoman farmer among them.  After all, our ancestors saw them as mere “clodhoppers”.  Jefferson and the emerging “Democracy” (as the Democratic Party was then widely known) did much to raise the standing of the middling farmer in frontier days, but the suspicion grew that perhaps more was needed.  The founders, mostly men well educated in the classics, knew that for the republic to survive required not only the dominance of men of middling means, but an “enlightened” dominance of men of middling means.  For this purpose the concept of a “public” education, first propounded by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and elaborated upon by Jefferson with the creation of the University of Virginia, was instituted in order to ensure that to a greater degree questions of public policy and the debates that would follow would be governed by not only by reason, but by “enlightened” self-interest..  These men were, after all, children of the “enlightenment”.

The “Enlightenment” is a term adopted by the Philosophes to describe the eighteenth century movement in Europe, centered in France, that sought to bring western civilization forward into the modern age.  The term “enlightenment” was adopted as counterpose  in stark contrast to the “Dark Ages” from which these philosophers would have us emerge.  Accordingly, they proclaimed the dawn of a new “age of reason” upon which the betterment, if not the perfectibility, of mankind would be achieved.  And so it was that many of disciples of Locke and Voltaire  gathered at Philadelphia in 1787 to draft a document in the name of the “We the people” in “order to form a more perfect union.”

In a certain sense, though, this document served merely to ratify what had already preceded. The concept of “popular sovereignty” given such breathless expression in the “Declaration of Independence” was reaffirmed here inasmuch as political legitimacy was once again declared to have originated with “the people”, not with Kings and princes, nor with gods.  “We, the People of the United States.....do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America” reads the preamble.  The “people” here declared with a capital “p”.  Again, as Ben Franklin was emerging from Constitution Hall a woman stopped him on the street and asked “what form of government have we, Mr. Frankin?”  “A republic”, answered the sage diplomat and philosopher, “if you can keep it”. 

If we can keep it.  What sort of Republic would depend upon what sort of people.  For a reading on this issue one has recourse to Federalist No. 10 written by James Madison of Virginia  (later President of the United States), and several other writings in the “Federalist Papers”.  What Madison foresaw was a “balancing act” between the various interests such that no single interest or combination of interests would be strong enough to “corner the market” or seize control of the republic.  A sort of “Interest Group Democracy” to rephrase a bit of contemporary terminology. (1)

As in the creation of the three “separate” “branches” of government, which was designed to balance, if not neutralize, one another, the intellectual forces that laid the foundations of the republic also sought to “balance interests” against each other.  They also sought to “balance” the forces of faction and, by extension, class.

They tried to minimize the damage of “faction” by first creating a stronger and, therefore, larger political entity in which these forces would have to contend.  It was much more difficult for strong economic or political interests to dominate a federation than a more localized state, they reasoned.  Accordingly, the emerging “federal” system with its multi-layered structure of governance would fragment political control as well as create overlapping areas of jurisdiction so as to make dominance more difficult.  As a crowning achievement they further complicated matters by dividing authority, as had the states, between judicial, executive and legislative functions.

But even this, they sensed was not enough.  Accordingly, one of the last acts under the government established by the  “Articles of Confederation” and pre-dating by a couple years the establishment of the new order, was the passage of the Northwest Ordinance of l787.  In it, the ruling elite in this country enshrined not only religious toleration (effectively neutralizing a prime source of “faction” and “discord”) but also laid down the foundation for the beginnings of a public school system that would, over the next century, become a model for the world.  Putting aside a section of land in each county of each emerging state for the purpose of funding public schools, the generation that founded this republic understood as Jefferson did with his work to found the University of Virginia that for a true republic to function it must be an “enlightened” republic.  If we must be governed by “self-interest”, as Madison so readily admits, then to insure that the public interest is served it must be a truly “enlightened” self-interest; otherwise it quickly degenerates to mere greed.


“Enlightened” self-interest, is a concept that makes it’s way well into the twentieth century.  So firm was the grasp of the idea held by our forefathers that writers in the late nineteenth century could proclaim the concept and carry the day when debating the issues of the time.  People like Lincoln Steffens, Gustavus Myers, Ida Tarbell, David Phillips understood the concept.  So too did men like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.  Broadly speaking “Enlightened” self-interest differs from it’s more base form in that the economic actor sees in a proposed course of action where his “true”, as opposed to his “apparent”,  self-interest lies.  To take a modern example, for instance, corporate heads by declaring war on the economic well being of their work force may perceive themselves to simply be acting in their own interests.  In the short term they are.  But by destroying the purchasing power of the very market that they hope to service they are in fact working against their own interests.  An “enlightened” view of the corporate interest, for example taken by Corporate America in the immediate postwar era (and prodded by government to do so) produced a more equitable distribution of the wealth and also record (for the time) corporate profits.  This “social contract” between capital and labor has been nearly destroyed in the last 40 years with results that are everywhere apparent. 

But how are the “people” to be brought to consistently perceive their own true self-interest from it’s more base form?  In a word how are we to be taught how to tell true gold from fool’s gold?  The answer, said our founders, lies in universal public education. 

It was in the education of the masses that our forefathers placed their hope.  What followed with the McGuffey reader, and Noah Webster’s new “dictionary” was the erstwhile attempt to “standardize’ education.  Not only were there efforts to “standardize” (still going on today with universal testing), but to establish norms of content called “liberal”.

A good “liberal” education, meaning a universal education meant to create the well-rounded man and, later, woman.  To that end, a “universal” set of core curriculum was established to produce a citizen who could, if need be, not only rush to the defense of his country, but could stand before a town-hall meeting, should the occasion arise, to advocate and defend his point of view.  To accomplish this not only would our citizen need to be “armed” with skills of “advocacy” and “reason” with which to make his argument, but he would have to be addressing an assembly who, having received a similar regimen of understanding, would be able to evaluate the relative merits of our republican exercise in expression.    For this not only would a general commonality of economic interests be needed, but also a general understanding of what our individual as well as the greater social interests truly are; true benchmarks upon which the greater community could judge the relative merits of the ongoing debates.  

Accordingly, our ancestors set about creating not only “a more perfect union”, but also a more perfect citizen.  Obligatory classes in ancient, European and modern western History were required.  Obligatory classes in government, if not governance, were also required.  These were augmented by the classical “liberal” education in our colleges and universities requiring courses in logic, ethics and reasoning, rhetoric, history and the social sciences, as well as at least taking the so-called “foundation” courses in the hard sciences with the hope that the emerging citizen would at least have enough understanding of math and science to know where his limitations lay.  In any case, education was seen as an avenue not only to produce the critical faculties of the citizen to judge right from wrong but also to be able discern fool’s gold from the genuine article.

All of this, of course, was undone by the very forces engendered by modern liberalism.
Fostering an overweening culture of toleration, the forces that gathered in the late 60's and early 70's roundly criticized academia as being too sexist, too Eurocentric, and too culturally biased.  What emerged was a movement for “ethnic diversity” on campus which served to destroy the common cultural understandings, or misunderstandings as the case may be.  In any case the common currency for social and political discourse came under attack.

There were other movements afoot.  Criticizing the universities for being hopelessly irrelevant, the boomers began agitation to transform higher education into what became a glorified job training program in effect opting out of the requirements of citizenship for the exigencies of the marketplace.  The result was that instead of becoming an ameliorative force for correcting the threat caused by the specializations of labor and knowledge (see previous post), the colleges and universities became yet another expression of our social fragmentation and alienation.   The wholesale discarding of broad curriculum requirements as well as the emerging on-line schools in which billions of federal dollars were spent in teaching what are, in effect, mere high school shop classes only resulted in moving students to “specialize” much earlier and in the process further exasperating the industrial and economic trends.

The result is that we now have a class of politicians earnestly holding forth on subjects about which they know little or nothing speaking to groups of people who are in no critical position to stand in judgement.  Instead of a robust citizenry standing before the assembled town-halls using empirical facts and reason, we have the denizens of woeful ignorance using brown-shirt tactics to shout down and end political discussion altogether.  Once again, we have come to a dead end: the politics of silence.

____________________________

1.  See Berry, Jeffrey M. “The Interest Group Society”, Little, Brown and Company,
             Boston, Toronto 1984. 220 pp.  Here the Professor at Tufts University declaims at
            length about the emergence of interest groups as the dominant unit of political
            organization such that such groups now control society.  Reading Federalist No.10
            written over 200 years earlier, one would not be surprised.  In fact, one would
            quite quickly come to the conclusion that it was designed that way.   

August 19, 2011: The Politics of Silence, Specialization Of Knowledge and the Generalization of Ignorance, America Struck Dumb

The following was written in early 1979 and originally presented to Penthouse Magazine for publication.  Robert Guccionne, in his wisdom, chose not to publish it.


Richard Nixon’s notion of the “Silent Majority”, an image of millions of mute Americans inaudibly whispering wisdom for which only Nixon had ears, bespoke a political truth remarkable for such a pathological liar.  With the “Silent Majority”, Nixon presented us with the most frightening political truth of our time: pre-industrial ideas concerning the legitimacy of the democratic order have little reality in post-industrial society.  The American Consensus no longer is produced by the knowledgeable debate of ideas in the political arena, but is instead a product of a growing complexity–a complexity produced by a growing specialization of knowledge-- which in turn produces a generalization of ignorance.  It is this emerging ignorance that gives legitimacy to the politics of silence.

A healthy democratic system rests upon a political consensus that is itself the product of a number of assumptions. First, there must exist a wide and pervasive, almost ‘all-powerful’ middle class; extremes of wealth and poverty must not confront each other with significant economic and, therefore, political power.  Accordingly the United States early developed a progressive democracy based on the abundance of middle class farmers and workers given security by the scarcity of labor and the abundant frontier.  Political life, founded upon this emergent yeoman farmer, created a consensus making possible expression through institutions like the New England Town Meeting and the Virginia House of Burgesses.  Consensus politics is, therefore, first an economic proposition.

However, Consensus Politics must also rest on the assumption of ‘universally’ understood causes of problems and ‘universally’ understood avenues of remedy.  In the age of the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer issues were, in relation to our time, much less complex and centered around measures promoting agriculture and assimilating the wilderness.  Consensus politics produced landmark legislation like the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, canal and railroad projects and capital investment in agriculture.  This sharing of economic, political, and social views produced government actions of fundamental importance; low tariffs, universal white manhood suffrage, and proportional representation.  These were means to ensure that the agricultural middle class would not be overpowered by others through the use of political power.  The early republic, formalized by the committees at Philadelphia, rested upon a political consensus itself rooted upon a wide and pervasive agricultural middle class confronting a ‘universal’ set of economic problems and working on a ‘universal’ set of solutions.   That is this middle class set about the business of expanding into and settling the wilderness through the work of men like Clay and Webster who assiduously worked to bind the nation together with roads, canals and railroads in a headlong race to head off the centrifical forces of sectionalism and disunion.  At its peak it produced the “Jacksonian Democracy”, a government anyone could presumably run.

The Nullification crises of the 1820s and 30s was the beginning of the end of the dominance of the yeoman farmer in American politics and, accordingly, the American political consensus was destroyed in the flames of the Civil War.  The age of High Capitalism, or the “Robber Barrons” to use Mark Twain’s terminology, ensued with the agricultural remnants acting not as dominant, but as a countervailing force giving impetus to the Greenback, Populist, and Progressive movements, as well as the New Deal–all agricultural movements serving to expand the franchise, alter monetary policy, and defend the political power of the middle class against the rising industrial cartels known at the time as the “trusts”, finally legitimizing organized labor.  The New Deal Coalition was produced by consensus politics, itself a descendant and heir to the political tradion of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian yeoman farmer. 

As the Industrial Revolution moved the majority of Americans off the land and into the cities, a most fundamental change was wrought not only in the nature of the middle class, but in the nature of the American Political Consensus.

With the Industrial Revolution came the specialization of labor.  This served not only to reduce the urban laborer to an automaton–an appendage to a machine–but the urban worker, unlike the farmer, no longer concerned himself with the whole process of production and the marketing of finished product.  Social and political questions became specialized as labor became increasingly specialized.  International trade,    futures markets, and monetary exchange rates for example, matters of some concern to the farmer is for the industrial worker only an abstraction as are questions of currency and stewardship of the community and the land upon which it rests.  Notably the urban worker was not prevelant in the “Greenback” or “Progressive” or, for that matter, the early “New Deal”.  For the laborer’s toiling in the packing houses of South Chicago, William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech had little resonance. It was Bryan’s fate to emerge upon the national scene at precisely the time when his audience was growing deaf to his impassioned appeal. 

Specialized labor also produced specialized knowledge known as the Technological Revolution.  This made imperative, as John Galbraith pointed out, the committee as the only effective means to manage industry or government.  Committees of engineers, design, cost and marketing specialists create an autonomous “technostructure” making the basic decisions about production, allocation, and marketing.  The corporate head must ratify decisions made at these middle levels lest ignorance be imposed on the system.  Henry Ford’s celebrated resistance to color changes, alternating electrical current, and college trained personnel brought Ford Motor to near ruin.  The principle holds true for government as well.  Andrew Jackson’s war on the National Bank produced the depression of 1837; the policies of both Herbert Hoover and the Federal Reserve prolonged the Great Depression.  Because no man can possess all the requisite expertise of a large modern enterprise, we have upon us an effective and growing ignorance at the highest levels.

If ignorance reigns at the highest echelons clearly, for many of the same reasons, a pervasive ignorance exists at lower levels.  The Technological Revolution has specialized knowledge beyond the grasp not only of the President of the United States, but clearly beyond the comprehension of the man in the street.  Indeed, the middle-level expert possesses a grasp of the problem only so far as it relates to h is respective area of expertise.  It is an ignorance that runs not only vertically but horizontally across departmental lines of expertise.  It is an ignorance that not only fragments authority and control, but confronts the complex issues of our time–energy, nuclear power, thermopollution, ecology–with the politics of silence. 

We are led back to the original proposition that the democratic system rests upon a wide, pervasive and knowledgeable middle class.  This foundation has been transformed by the Industrial-Technological Revolutions from the Jeffersonian yeoman farmer to the modern urbanite.  In both a similarity of economic station and political moderation exists.  However there is a qualitative difference between the two.  In the latter, the Technological Revolution has created a prevailing ignorance of social problems and remedies.  Technology has also fragmented lines of control from top-down, bottom-up and laterally across the departments of middle-level expertise.  It has specialized knowledge and generalized ignorance, and it is upon this foundation of ignorance that social debate must now take place.  It is upon the consensus of mindlessness; it is upon the consensus of ignorance; it is upon the consensus of silence–legitimized by the state as ‘tacit consent’ that the structure of political debate and the nature of political legitimacy now rest.  Consensus is now held incapable of political expression with debate reduced to a deafening silence, and political legitimacy reduced to the groan of ‘tacit consent’.

If “King Richard” failed in his attempt to resolve the dilemma by proclaiming the President sovereign, he succeeded, for once, in presenting us with something more than a mere caricature of truth.  He presented us with the spectre of America, terrorized by ignorance, struck dumb.

June 3, 2011: For Whom the Bells Toll, Dumb is Forever, Teaching the Unwashed

“He who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and, um, making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that, uh, we were going to be secure and we were going to be free” (1)
Erstwhile Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin speaking in Boston

Speaking this week at Boston’s Old North Church, Alaska’s resident idiot and former half-governor revealed once again the deep and dark intellectual void at the core of the conservative movement. One would think, given the trillions that Corporate America is currently sitting on, that the collective brains of the ‘trusts’ could come up with better shills to politically represent them. Instead we are faced with the horrifying prospect that the Rescumlican Party will, in convention, bestow legitimacy and political stature on this witless woman, or some reasonable facsimile. One wag, writing in the comments beneath the Yahoo page in which this story was posted wrote: “Beauty fades, dumb is forever.”

Palin, it seems, was in New England using the region as a backdrop for a tour to “educate” America about our founding fathers and our struggle for freedom. Perhaps, some have suggested, this is merely a prelude to launching her campaign for the White House. I’ve always held that the purpose of a political campaign, properly conducted, is to educate and enlighten both the candidate and the people. While the prospects of such an extended ordeal educating the candidate would, in this case, seem remote, a Palin candidacy does offer at least a back-hand approach to a national history and civics lesson. If it is true, as Ambrose Bierce once said, that “war is God’s way of teaching geography to Americans” then it would appear that the political equivalent of a Palin presidential campaign would surely be God’s way of teaching the great unwashed their own history. That is, jf they can keep up with the deluge of corrections and learn, as she does not, by her mistakes.


Footnotes:

1. http://beta.news.yahoo.com/blogs/upshot/palin-flubs-explanation-paul-revere-ride-215549982.html