March 14, 2016: Salutary Task, Full Panic Mode, Experience Has Not Served

 

On the Republican side, the structure of the primary schedule, however, favored the insurgent Donald Trump who, having performed the salutary task of dispensing the last of the Bush Dynasty, ran away with the Southern primaries with his transparently racist and xenophobic agenda and his crypto-fascist campaign style; a recipe sure to appeal to the gut instincts of those who fly the stars and bars.  What the moneyed elites who are presently losing their tenuous grasp on the levers of the Rescumlican Party do not understand is that these people have been savaged by the economic policies of their party and are now in no mood to be dictated to by the policy wonks holed up at the Heritage Foundation or any of the other stink tanks heretofore directing the show.  This struggle can be openly seen in the tussle now occurring between Donald Trump and the current Speaker of the House who insists on driving budgets that savage the very people that inhabit these haunts.  Accordingly, the ‘evangelicals’, the rank and file that is, are voting for the likes of Donald Trump, much to the chagrin of their religious and Republican Party leaders. 

The Rescumlican leadership now finds itself in full panic mode as the flock have fled the pen and left the reservation.  Mitt Romney, speaking before a group at the University of Utah, excoriated Trump, calling him out on his many failures and his phoniness.  This, alas, only served to strengthen Trump as the rank and file of the Rescumlican Party, long inured to the influence of the ‘press’ quickly ciphered that Trump must be worth something to be hated in so indecent a fashion.  And so as “Faux News” rails against the upstart to no avail; the king makers, long accustomed to docility, now find themselves confronted with a full-fledged revolt for, alas, it turns out that the beer-drinking fans of NASCAR do not have the same economic agenda as Wall Street hedge fund managers and vulture capitalists.  The southern primaries were meant to stop this.  Evangelicals and Southern good-old-boy racism were meant to prevent any woolly-headed ideas cooked up by northern liberals from ever emerging on the national stage. 

But this is a different year.  The times, they say, ‘are-a-changing’.  On the political right (wrong), instead of hampering the economic populism always nascent in conservative America, such is the strength of the ‘populist’ revolt currently underway that all the old bromides—abortion, flag-waving jingoism, and appeals to ‘tinkle-down’ free-market economics, have the sound of tinkling brass—or, rather, a cruel hoax.  Instead the rank and file on the conservative end of the spectrum, retaining only the all-too-transparent racism and misogyny, have opted for a full-throated rage against the economic policies that have created this mess.

Nowhere is this seen as clearly as in the wholesale rejection by the Rescumlican rank-and-file of experience.  Why? Because experience hasn’t served them very well.  Those in power are the ones who created this mess in the first place; and, after nearly 4 decades in which the Middle Class has been left with their faces pressed against the window as the party inside went on and on, there is now rumbling in the streets.

Gone now are Governors Rick Perry, Scott Walker, Chris Christie and, most notably, John Ellis Bush leaving only The Donald, followed by an empty shirt and a messianic menace, both first-term senators.  Only John Kasich of Ohio, of those still standing, has any real experience in governance. For it is written “the Last shall be First”.

 

 

March 9, 2016: From the Jaws of Victory, Cries from the Rustbelt, As If For The First Time

 

“To date the Democrats have proven adept only at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”

                       ----from “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this, but something happened on the way to the forum.  After battling Hillary to a dead heat in the Iowa Caucus, Bernie Sanders administered a sharp blow to the ‘Once and Future Queen’ by crushing her in Vermont and New Hampshire.  But, schooled in inspired stupidity, the mossbacks running the Democratic Party erected a ‘firewall’ against any progressive insurgency by first selecting over 700 so-called, ‘super delegates’ composed of elected officials and party big-Whigs, and secondly but creating “Super-Tuesday”, the first of the great primary nights, duly front-loaded in early March so as to insure that the insurgent candidate doesn’t have enough time, should he or she do well in the early contests, to raise enough money and field an effective ground-game operation.  Moreover, this event is concentrated in the deep South, shortly on the heels of the snake pit in South Carolina, a sure fire way to thwart any would-be challenger to the status quo.  Or so it seems.

Emerging from his stunning performance in Iowa, in which the outcome was quite literally decided by the tossing of coin, and his crushing of Clinton in New Hampshire, Sanders had a tough hill to climb in the Southeast, the area of the country that although it benefited greatly from the New Deal has, because of Civil Rights, proven in the last half century increasingly hostile toward liberalism. Here is the bulwark erected by the party apparatchiks to prevent the emergence and nomination of another George McGovern and these primaries have—scheduled as they are in the primary sequence and grouped together into a loose ‘Southern Bloc’, have indeed produced the likes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, southern political practitioners that have, on balance, proven to be material accomplices in the dismantling of the New Deal.  Carter by introducing and legitimizing the fundamentalist voting bloc, beginning the process of wholesale deregulation, increasing defense spending as a percentage of GDP, taxing unemployment benefits and, most notably calling the progressive tax code a ‘disgrace to the human race’.  Clinton, of course, repealed Glass-Steagall, continued deregulation, ratified Reagan’s destruction of the progressivity of the tax code, as well as committing the country to trade agreements that hollowed out the manufacturing base of the country, balanced budgets on the backs of the working people, began the policy of wholesale incarcerations, and signed off on the telecommunications act of 1996 which created the corporate dominance of the media we have now.  Given when the primaries are held and the order in which they held any would be insurgency from the political left, in either party, risks being snuffed at its inception.   

Accordingly, Hillary, resting her campaign upon her strengths with the African-American community, as well as what is left of the old party machinery, ran up some impressive victories in Dixie, from South Carolina through Georgia and Alabama, all the way to Louisiana.  But Bernie, of late has come back with victories in Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska, those areas that were the hotbed of the old prairie fire that fueled the progressive movement and the New Deal.  But the press, determined to anoint the anointed one had all but written off the Sanders insurgency.  Then came Michigan.

In a sense the press had it right.  Michigan was a must-win for Sanders, for it is difficult to see where he had to go had Clinton won, especially if she had won decisively. If he could not win in Michigan, a state savaged by the economic legacy of the first Clinton Presidency, where could he win?

Then came the cry from the Rustbelt.  Alas, this was not supposed to happen.  “The most recent poll had Clinton ahead by 27 points. The RealClearPolitics average had her winning by 21 points. Even the most optimistic poll had Sanders trailing by 13 points”. (1)  Nate Silber’s much heralded “FiveThirtyEight.com” was stunned, observing in the aftermath: “to find an upset on the same scale as what Sanders achieved in Michigan, you’d have to go back over 30 years. Those polls that put Illinois and Ohio out of Sanders’s reach look a lot less reliable today. And if Sanders wins in those states, it won’t be his viability as a candidate that is in question.” (2)

Once again, as eight years ago, large segments of the Democratic constituencies are recoiling at the prospect of a Clinton restoration.  And for good reason.  Where were the Clintons in the fight to keep those good paying jobs from leaving the country?  Where were they on welfare reform, on re-regulation, on anti-trust, on a whole host of issues.  Most of what they ‘accomplished’ was either a ratification of the Reagan reaction or ‘improvements’ upon it becoming by degrees material accomplices in the ongoing dismantlement of the New Deal.  And, like their conservative mentors presided over yet another recovery to which the Middle Class was not invited. 

Presented with yet another challenge the Clinton’s go about what they have always done, smearing their opponent.  With Obama it was dog-whistle racial innuendo, questioning his ability to be ‘commander-in-chief’ and lending initial credibility to the ‘birther’ nonsense.  Eight years later, and once again in full-panic mode, they are about smearing an opponent’s record, questioning his commitment to Civil Rights by pointing out that he represents lily-white Vermont.  Here the Clinton’s demonstrate their remarkable political dexterity.  Eight years ago when Obama had locked up the black vote, the Clinton’s were campaigning like George Wallace in order to carry West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee. Now, confronted with a challenge from an old white Jew they present themselves as the champion of minorities, denigrating Bernie’s involvement in the Civil Rights struggle.  It hasn’t fooled everyone, Ben Jealous for instance, the former head of the NAACP has endorsed Bernie, but the strategy worked well enough for Hillary to win big victories in the South where blacks represent a much greater percentage of the Democratic vote—especially if the turnout is low—then they represent in the general population.  The other narrative is, of course to paint him as some wild-eyed radical, a hopeless idealist, advocating some ‘pie-in-the-sky’ radical agenda when all Bernie is suggesting is that we restore the New Deal and the tax code of Dwight Eisenhower.  As I remind my Democratic colleagues, most of whom support Hillary, of course we can do it, our ancestors did it back in the day when we believed and therefore invested in ourselves.  This is ‘revolutionary’ only in the original meaning of the term, that is things have gone ‘full circle’.  Past as prelude.  We have made this journey to find ourselves at the point at which it all began, and to see it as if for the first time.

_______

(1). “Why Bernie Sanders’s Win in Michigan is Huge” The Nation. http://www.thenation.com/article/why-bernie-sanderss-win-in-michigan-is-huge/

(2). Ibid.

 

 

March 8, 2016: When 6 Becomes 9, Fundamental Re-alignment, Material Accessories to the Dismantlement of the New Deal

 

“The Clinton’s have been material accessories to the dismantlement of the New Deal”

                        ----From “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

Economist and former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration posted this observation on Facebook this morning:

“America could be on the verge of a fundamental political realignment. Starting with the New Deal, the Democrats were the party of blue-collar workers while the Republicans represented the white-collar establishment. But the tables may be reversed in coming years.

To understand this possibility, consider that right now there are four political tribes in America -- each with its own nominee for President:

1. The Democratic establishment (suburban professionals, Democratic political insiders, liberal-leaning business executives, political centrists). Their candidate is Hillary Clinton.

2. The Republican anti-establishment Right (evangelicals and abortion foes, Tea Partiers, climate-change deniers, federal-government haters, and Fox News addicts). They want Ted Cruz.

3. The Republican anti-establishment isolationists and bigots (economic losers, foes of free trade, angry about immigrants, fearful of Muslims). They want Donald Trump.

4. The Democratic anti-establishment (worried most about widening inequality, concentrated wealth and power at the top, corporate control of our democracy, Wall Street’s excesses). They want Bernie Sanders.

The most prominent group without a political leader at the moment is the Republican establishment (corporate and Wall Street heads, coastal elites, mid-level executives, small-business owners, right-of-center retirees).

If Trump or Cruz becomes the Republican candidate, and Hillary gets the Democratic nomination, the Republican establishment will line up behind Hillary Clinton -- who will thereby become the candidate of the white collar American establishment (in uneasy coalition with African-Americans).

And Trump or Cruz will be the candidate of the white working class. The New Deal reversal will be complete.

What do you think?” (1)

This is precisely the analysis being put forward in this column, for the political center has given way and a new governing coalition will emerge from this election cycle.  How permanent it will be will depend upon who wins the election and what the next president does in office to cement the emergent coalition in power.  We had thought that this had happened after the 2008 cycle only to see that because the structural issues concerning the economy had not been addressed and the plight of the Middle Class had not been alleviated that the coalition that has elected Obama for two terms is unravelling.  The reasons for this have been previously delineated in these columns and will be subjects of continuing commentary but for our purposes here it is enough to say that, in the words of Bob Dylan, ‘the wheel’s still in spin’. 

Professor Reich is right in that what now looms if the Republicans nominate Trump or Cruz and the Democrats nominate Hillary is that we will have an effective swap of political positions as the ‘liberals’ abandon all pretense of ‘progressivism’ and abdicate their historic role as the voice of the ‘people’. The ‘populist’ revolt will by default fall into the hands of the political wrong—the right wing crypto fascists.  And therein lies the tragedy. 

There are reasons why the good professor, a friend of Hillary’s since she was 19 years old, has now openly endorsed the candidacy of Bernie Sanders for President.  He understands what is as stake here: not only a battle for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party but a struggle, not unlike that which our ancestors faced, to lead the populist revolt in a progressive direction and in so doing save the underpinning of the middle class and the foundations of the republic itself. 

For the Clintons it will, however, represent a singular victory for Hillary especially.  Ever since her days as a ‘Goldwater girl’ in which she labored assiduously on behalf of the architect of dismantling the New Deal, Hillary and her husband Bill have labored mightily to transform the Democratic Party into ‘Bush-Lite’, if not the party of Wall Street.

Let there be no mistake about it. The Clintons have been material accessories to the dismantling of the New Deal, from the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the replacement of AFDC (passed by FDR in 1933) savaging in turn the social safety net, the failure to enforce anti-trust laws, the encouragement of mergers and acquisitions—especially in finance and energy, the wholesale incarceration and sponsorship of privatization, the awful trade agreements that have hollowed out our industrial base and destroyed our unions…ad nauseum.   Her nomination in the teeth of a full-fledged populist revolt that now spans the entire political spectrum would be a testament to the complete transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of FDR, JFK, and LBJ to the party of William McKinley, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover. 

Welcome to the 21^st Century where 6 is 9.

-------

(1)   Robert Reich Facebook post of March 8, 2016.

 

February 27, 2016: The Nature of Populism, Ideological Ambivalence, A Question of Leadership

“Anti-establishment populism has been the most important force in our politics for the last twenty years. It is neither liberal nor conservative. Politicians on both sides have used it effectively.  American populism has three important characteristics.  It is ideologically ambivalent. And it has displaced progressivism as the dominant motif of American Politics.  Elites tend to be rich and well-educated, hence, economically conservative and culturally sophisticated. Populism is anti-elitist and therefore just the reverse—left wing on economic issues and right-wing on social and cultural issues.”

                        --Political analyst William Schneider, 1986 (1)

Writing nearly a quarter century ago that America was nearing the ‘boiling point’, conservative political strategist Kevin Phillips, author of Richard Nixon’s 1968 ‘Southern Strategy’, documented the agony of America’s middle class as it writhed in pain under the impact of Reaganomics.  Little could he have imagined that the Middle Class would continue to endure the pressure cooker for more than another two decades.   Phillips, in his initial work “The Politics of Rich and Poor” and his sequel to “Boiling Point”, “Arrogant Capital”, documents not only the pressures and decline of the contemporary middle class in the United States, but puts the present conundrum in the context of previous ‘populist’ revolts that have served to correct the abuses of wealth in this country.  His reference here to the observation of contemporary political analyst William Schneider that American populism is a schizophrenic affair in that it is economically liberal and socially conservative is both illuminating and not new.

Historian Richard Hofstadter, writing more than a quarter century before Schneider and Phillips in his work “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life” (2) had many of the same observations regarding previous eras of political reform.  The historical record reveals that all ‘populist’ movements are a mix of liberalism and conservatism, specifically in the United States the Greenback and Progressive movements of the late 19^th and early 20^th century have always been a complex mix of liberal and conservative, intellectual and anti-intellectual elements struggling for dominance in an effort to give political definition and produce political remedy to the challenges of their times. Therefore, it was the ‘prairie fire’ coming out of the plains of Kansas and Nebraska, as well as from the Deep South, that drove the revolts of the late 19^th century organized around the Grange and the Greenback movements and thrice nominating the scourge of Wall Street, Democrat William Jennings Bryan for President of the United States.

And it was the same impetus from the same regions added to the industrial unrest in the Mid-West that fueled the revolts producing the great Progressive upheaval of the early decades of the last century and thereafter the New Deal.  But make no mistake about it, the same political forces that gave us the 8-hour work day, ended child labor, won for women the right to vote, re-instituted a federal income tax and eventually produced a ‘progressive’ graduated income tax, enforce anti-trust and broke up the cartels, instituted referendum, recall, and the direct election of the U.S. Senate, was the same movement that created and enforce Jim Crow in the South, restricted immigration, resisted attempts to end lynching’s.  Even as late as the 1930’s to the 1960’s, efforts to move a ‘progressive’ agenda depended on working with or getting around the mossbacks of conservatism, congressional committee chairmen almost all of them from Southern States.  Just as FDR had to make his deals with the likes of Arkansas Senator Joseph Robinson who ,as Senate Majority Leader, he would have to rely upon in order to herd much needed New Deal Legislation through the Senate , so LBJ would have to wheedle his way past the staunch opposition from the likes of Senate Judiciary Committee chairman James Eastland of Mississippi, Eastland’s fellow Mississippi Senator John Stennis, Georgia Senators Richard Russell and Herman Tallmadge, as well as Strom Thurmond and a host of others that held powerful committee and sub-committee chairmanships and all signers of the ‘southern manifesto’ hell-bent on stopping the civil rights initiative of the Johnson administration in its tracks.

Socially conservative but economically liberal, these representatives of the American ‘heartland’, would regularly enough line up to support federal programs like the TVA but would stand in stalwart opposition to any attempt to extend their progressive agenda to minorities.  Indeed, it was Lyndon Johnson’s attempt to do that very thing—that is extend the benefits of the New Deal to those that were left behind—that brought about the unravelling of the New Deal Coalition. The ‘populist’ movement broke apart into its constituent elements with ‘populist’ economic liberals joining fellow social liberals and ‘populist’ social conservatives aligning themselves with emerging religiously based ‘Moral Majority’ joining forces with the main-line eastern moneyed interests and in the process forming a new governing coalition that would, with some slight interruptions, dominate American politics for the next half-century.

Ideologically ambivalent, profoundly anti-establishment, anti-elitist and—according to historian Hofstadter—more than occasionally deeply paranoid Populism has today emerged as a full-blown political upheaval. No longer simply “ideologically ambivalent” but spanning the entire political spectrum from the ‘political revolution’ offered by the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders on the American left, to the deeply paranoid, anti-intellectual, the populist revolt now underway in the United States is now systematically about the business of rejecting the ‘political elite’ in an effort to free itself from the yoke of what the middle classes view as a governing ‘class’ that in Reagan’s haunting words are ‘the problem’. 

It is worth noting here that of the candidates offering themselves for consideration in the present election nearly all with any discernable experience in governing have been summarily jettisoned by the electorate.  Gone is Rick Perry of Texas, the nation’s longest serving governor and the first to make his exit, followed by the Governors of Wisconsin and New Jersey, Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina and one John Ellis (JEB) Bush, leaving now the Real Estate Tycoon with the bad hair, the former Detroit neurosurgeon, the neophyte Senator from Florida and one Ted Cruz of Texas who, Senator Graham has informed us, if he were to be shot and killed on the Senate floor his assailant, were he to be tried by Cruz’s fellow Senators, would be acquitted and set free.

We have been here before.  A century and more ago our ancestors likewise rose in revolt against what Phillips now refers to as arrogant capital.  Rising in revolt against the excesses of the Gilded Age our ancestors managed to harness the pain, the anxieties, and the anger of those being exploited by the dominant economic elites by taking control of the language, controlling the debate, and marshalling the political energy by forging a truly Progressive movement.  As Gore Vidal once observed about Roosevelt and the New Deal, “it could easily have gone the other way”, meaning that the movement could have degenerated into a crypto fascist affair.  The outcome, as the experiences of twentieth century Europe attest, is neither reliably progressive nor a foregone conclusion.

This, it seems to me is what lies at the heart of this election.  The question isn’t simply a battle for the soul of the Democratic Party.  It isn’t simply a question of progressives wresting control of the party from the clutches of the mossbacks in the form of the remnants of Bill Clinton’s old DLC cabal; it is a struggle for control of the larger populist movement now transcendent across the political spectrum.

Bernie Sanders is quite right. Donald Trump’s supporters are Bernie’s natural constituency inasmuch as Bernie is addressing the economic issues that so belabor the working classes—those remnants of the ‘Reagan-Democrats” cum ‘Teabaggers’ whose protest is largely over economic rather than social issues and for whom the Republican alliance with big business and Wall Street are anathema.  These people have no interest in dismantling the New Deal, they have no interest in savaging the safety net, or in cutting education, road building or any of the rest of the agenda of groups like the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth.  And they are now exercising enough power to send the pre-emptive ‘establishment’ favorites—the Scott’s, the Bushes, the Christies—packing. 

The question before us in this election is who is going to lead this revolt?  Who is going to give definition to the movement? Will it be the Republicans or the Democrats?  Will it be the Liberals or once again the conservatives?  The last time such a revolt occurred nearly half-century ago in 1968 it was the conservatives that gave definition—Nixon’s Southern strategy and his “Silent Majority”.  Will they once again steal the floor and become the voice of the discontent?

It is worth repeating here.  When Robert Kennedy was assassinated in June of 1968, many of his followers—especially in the old populist regions of the country (the South and plains) moved their support to George Wallace.  On its face one wouldn’t link these two political figures in American politics.  But Wallace, stripped of his avowedly racist overtones, was like his precursor Huey Long a populist.  Stridently anti-elite railing against ‘brief-case toting beaurocrats and ‘pointy-headed intellectuals’ Wallace was, as was Long who waged war against the dominance of Standard Oil and other major interests in Louisiana politics, nevertheless a stalwart defender of the economic interests of the middle classes.

The present revolt of the Middle Classes, now spanning the entire political spectrum, is pregnant with possibility and fraught with danger.  As the ground beneath us begins to tremble and the earth begins to move beneath our very feet the question before us is “where will the new political center fall?” and “what will be the nature of the coalition that emerges that will govern this country for the foreseeable future?” These questions are not left to chance.  These questions are solved by political organization and advocacy, translating themselves into political agendas and votes; about which I have two observations:

First, the political ‘left’ or what passes for the political left in this country is late to the table.  Groups like the ‘Freedom Foundation”, Billionaires like the Koch Brothers and others, and conservative stink-tanks like the Heritage Foundation and Club for Growth, have been working for years on developing agendas and building political organizations.  They, heretofore, have determined the language and, therefore, the terms of the debate.  Liberals have been slow to recognize this resulting in the wholesale losses of seats in state legislatures, governorship's, and seats in the U.S. congress.  A great deal of ground must be made up in a real hurry if we are to marshal the political energy engendered by the revolt into constructive public policy.

Secondly, for the above reasons it will be a complete disaster if the Democrats were to nominate Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.  Hillary, the ultimate ‘insider’, Wall Street’s and the Walton Family’s favorite Democrat, is hardly in a position to tap the current rage against the political elite’s that have created this economic and national catastrophe.  Indeed, her continual insistence that she is the one with ‘experience’ while it may win her the nomination, is as ham-handed and tone-deaf as JEB Bush insisting that the remedy for our current angst is for people to ‘work harder’.  For it should have long since been obvious that the public’s rejection of the most experience candidates on the Republican side as well as the remarkable success of the insurgency of outsider Bernie Sanders that the public does not and will not respect the dictates of the ‘elites’.  And why should they?  What did all that experience produce?  Longer hours, less pay, more money being funneled to the investor class. 

The question, as previously formulated is who is going to lead this revolt?  If the Dems nominate Clinton, the beneficiary is Trump and the conservative movement just as the nomination of Humphrey in 1968 benefited first Wallace and then Nixon.  The political center, as in 1968, shifts to the wrong.  If the Dems nominate Sanders, then liberals have a real chance at claiming the votes not only of large numbers of independents but also of that part of the Republican base that has no interest in social conservatism at the price of sacrificing their own economic interests

.

This much is certain: The political center has given way; it no longer holds. No one is interested in Obama’s third term or, given that Obama surrounded himself with the likes of Geithner, Summers and a host of Wall Street contributors and advisers from Bill Clinton’s administration, Clinton’s fifth term.  It’s so passé, so late 20^th century.    

 ________

(1). See Phillips, Kevin P. “The Boiling Point”. Random House, New York 1993 page 58

(2) Hofstadter, Richard. “Anti-Intellectualism in American Life”  Alfred A. Knopf, New York

                        1970 434 pages.

February 26, 2016: The Monk of Clairvaux, Depth of Decline, Know Not How to Govern

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) (1) in a letter to his disciple Eugenius had this to say about the vices and Tumults of Rome:

“Who is ignorant”, says the monk of Clairvaux, “of the vanity and the arrogance of the Romans? A nation nursed in sedition, cruel, untractable, and scorning to obey, unless they are too feeble to resist.  When they promise to serve, they aspire to reign; if they swear allegiance, they watch the opportunity of revolt; yet they vent their discontent in loud clamors, if your doors or your counsels are shut against them.  Dexterous in mischief, they have never learned the science of doing good.  Odious to earth and heaven, impious to God, seditious among themselves, jealous of their neighbours, inhuman to strangers, they love no one, by no one are they loved; and while they wish to inspire fear, they live in base and continual apprehension.  They will not submit; they know not how to govern; faithless to their superiors, intolerable to their equals, ungrateful to their benefactors, and alike impudent in their demands and their refusals.  Lofty in promise, poor in execution: adulation and calumny, perfidy and treason, are familiar arts of their policy.” (2)

This account of the sorry state into which the once proud Romans had degenerated by the 12^th century could easily describe contemporary America and the malaise currently gripping the American psyche.  Nothing, better describes attitudes and behaviors of the contemporary United States currently in the grip of the narcissistic Boomers, the ‘Generation of Swine”; and nowhere is this malignancy more manifest than in the mischief presently perpetrated by the knuckle-dragging conservative movement which releasing itself from the bonds of reason has proceeded to make a mockery of not only public policy but the very legitimacy of governance itself.  History, it appears, has run its course on the American Empire as the cancer that is the American Conservative movement works its way through the body politic.

Across this land one hears a constant chorus of ‘it can’t be done’.  We can’t afford health insurance; we can’t afford to invest in infrastructure; we can’t afford to invest in our people and our labor force; we can’t afford the new technologies necessary to save ourselves, and perhaps the planet, from the devastating demands being imposed upon mother nature by modern civilization. This has become the Mantra of the Swine.

This isn’t a recent development.  It began precisely at that junction when the “Boomers” came, politically speaking, ‘of age’.  Just as the ‘Can-Do’ attitudes of our fathers put a man on the moon the “Boomers”, having chased a President from office and about to vote for the first time, added to their critique of war and peace the questioning of our investments in the space program.  The argument, so it went, was that we couldn’t afford the program.  And so Nixon, always with his ear to the ground, cut the funding for NASA eliminating at least two more moon missions and relegating the space program for decades to the continual circling of the earth in low space orbit.  The era of “Can’t-Do” had arrived.

And so began the not-so-slow downward spiral as one program after another suffered budget cuts and America began a serial disinvestment in its future and in itself.  The “Boomers”, embracing a conservative and libertarian creed, have by degrees hollowed out not only the industrial economy of a once great nation but it’s very soul; to the very point where we now “know not how to govern” and, indeed question the very legitimacy of governance itself.   

______

(1). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_of_Clairvaux

(2). Gibbon, Edward “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.  Methuen & Co

            London 1914. Volume VII, page 228

January 3, 2016: Eisenhower’s Farewell, Military-Industrial Complex, The 'Iron Triangle'

Periodically my uncle posts on his Facebook page a reminder of Dwight Eisenhower’s “Farewell” speech to the nation delivered in early 1961 as he was in the process of relinquishing power to the newly elected John F. Kennedy.  Asking those who frequent him on Facebook if we remember it, I posted this response:

“Yes, I remember it. What inspired it was that Ike sent his science advisor George Kistiakowsky to SAC headquarters to inspect the plans the Air Force had in place for nuclear retaliation in the event of a nuclear exchange, only to be informed that not only was the president's advisor not privy the 'plans', but that the president himself was not cleared for security. Kistiakowsky famously replied that he would put in a call to the oval office and the generals would be free to explain to the commander-in-chief himself why it was that the information was not forthcoming. Eventually the military brass backed down, perhaps reckoning the stature of the former General would make their position look ridiculous. Upon examining the military's strategic plans which included nuclear weapons targeting Moscow that would be nine times the power used at Hiroshima, Ike concluded that the military, and their industrial partners, were engaging is grotesque "overkill", producing weapons and levels of retaliation out of all proportion to what was militarily necessary. The result was his famous "Farewell Address" to the nation, patterned after the example of another supreme commander George Washington.”

Originally dubbing it the “Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex” Ike, always the diplomat sensitive to political sensibilities, reduced to calling it simply the “Military-Industrial Complex” so as to hopefully not thwart much needed efforts to reign in on the military by needlessly offending tender congressional egos. 

Ike was clearly on to something.  In what would later be described by historians and scholars of public administration ‘The Iron Triangle’ (1) Ike the experienced military and political leader spoke with great authority. 

“My fellow Americans:

Three days from now, after half a century in the service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.

Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on issues of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the Nation.

My own relations with the Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and, finally, to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the national good rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the Nation should go forward. So, my official relationship with the Congress ends in a feeling, on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

II.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

III.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology -- global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method. Unhappily the danger is poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle -- with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in newer elements of our defense; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research -- these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.

But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs -- balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage -- balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well, in the face of stress and threat. But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise. I mention two only.

IV.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

V.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

VI.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war -- as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years -- I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

VII.

So -- in this my last good night to you as your President -- I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.

You and I -- my fellow citizens -- need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nation's great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.” (2)

Prescient words spoken by a man who was in a position to know much and learn more; a man of enduring decency and commanding stature. 

______________

1.     The “Iron Triangle” is the relationship between contractors, the military and the relevant congressional committees responsible for military appropriations.  Generals make their annual budgetary demands before congress based on real and imagined military requirements themselves determined after consultation with the contractors.  They are put before the relevant committees who are themselves beneficiaries of massive campaign contributions by the very contractors that do business with the military.  The result is a closed loop, a three corner arrangement, an “iron triangle” from which spiraling costs and military requirements can produce some very outrageous outcomes. 

2.     http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst306/documents/indust.html

January 1, 2016 100 Catherine Avenue (‘Round Here)

100 Catherine Avenue ('Round Here)

I turn my collar and step out into the night

feeling my bones and the shivering timbers

As the wind whistles through my soul

And the shrouds start their singing

reaching a screaming high-pitched howl.

At night they come ‘round like clockwork

gather and circle ‘round my bed.

I cannot make out the conversation

For the ringing in my head.

‘round here, the night is very long

She came searching for a reason

And cradled gently in my arms

I chased away the demons

And filled her full of joy and hope.

‘round here, we stand up very strong

She called one morning sobbing

reaching, grasping through the line

she cried “Joey, I’m bleeding,”

 And, almost incoherently, “I’ve lost our grain of sand.”

“’round here, it’s slipping through my hands”

‘round here, she said “it’s slipping through my hands”

‘round here, she said “no one understands”

‘round here, she said “you’ll miss me when I’m gone”

‘round here, she said “you’ll need them to keep you warm”

‘round here, the night is very, very, long

If I close my eyes I find myself

On the Atlanta Highway once again.

On my way back from the “Love Shack”

Blinded by the blood-red mourning sun.

‘round here, I’m blinded by the mourning sun

She found them on the streets of Athens

and brought the little urchins home.

 saying “someday you’re gonna miss me,

and you’ll need them to keep you warm.”

‘round here, you’ll need them to keep you warm

The ghost-white curtains are moving

Though the windows are tightly closed

And they move now ever closer

To keep me safe and sound.

‘round here, they keep me safe and sound

‘round here, she said “it’s slipping through my hands”

‘round here, she said “no one understands”

‘round here, she said “you’ll miss me when I’m gone”

‘round here, she said “you’ll need them to keep you warm”

‘round here, the night is very, very, very, very long

Stopping by a graveyard on a snowy evening

Broken stones once marked the names and dates

A scene conjured up by Frost and Faulkner

Abandoned now to smuttish time and cruel fates.

‘round here, we once carved out our names

Now I find myself walking dogs

Chasing squirrels and Counting Crows

And though the nights are oh so long

I cannot greet the garish sun

‘round here, we do not greet the garish sun

‘round here, it’s slipping through my hands.

‘round here, no one understands.

‘round here, I miss you, now my muse is gone.

‘round here, I need them now to keep me, to keep me, warm.

‘round here, the nights are very, very, very, very, very, very long.

‘round here.

_______

Special thanks to Counting Crows for the refrain “Round Here”, as well as William Faulkner, Robert Frost, the B-52’s, William Shakespeare and, of course, Katie for the inspiration.

As Bono and U2 remind us, every poet is a thief.