Gods of the Marketplace

Unfettered capitalism is white collar crime,
with which the people have become too familiar 
--RangerAgainstWar 

The trouble with selfish motive
 is that they begin to look like principles,
 and you end up sending your kids to die for them 
--Robert Brault 

~Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben,
or do you think that we can stimulate growth
through temporary incentives?

~ As long as the roots are not severed,
all is well. And all will be well in the garden 
--Being There (1979)
___________________

Some apres-election thoughts:

First: the primary system that serves us our cookie-cutter twins every four years is a dud; it may work at the state or local level, but cannot operate adequately on the National.  Instead, it reliably delivers demagogues who lack the aptitude to govern The People.  They are Pandars.

We have learned to take what we are given -- superficial, shallow leaders with a veneer of poise, confidence and and verbal acumen, with a faint whiff of elan (not too much!).  Like children being coaxed to eat some unsavory, we are told that there are starving children elsewhere (Be happy you have food!)

The primary system delivers losers wearing various masks of success and we buy into the gambit, wasting our votes on buffoons or downright righteous idiots.


Second:  Capitalism is no longer a functioning adjunct to democracy; ultimately, Capitalism will destroy our United States system of democracy.

Democracy requires discipline, production and commensurate consumption. Capitalism today is delivering the opposite bill of goods:  It is undisciplined, and productivity is no longer our yardstick of excellence. Today's Capitalism is based upon profit versus the good of society at large.  Additionally, Capitalism fosters the flow of our wealth to regions beyond our borders.  Presidential contender Mitt Romney's closed Swiss bank accounts and his offshore Cayman money are examples of this.

The consumption process in Capitalism and in Democracy are conflicting ideas.  The Republicans want the benefits of Capitalism to accrue to the monied strata, which has always been a goal of Capitalism (up to now) but this is in opposition to what a Democracy needs in order to sustain individual freedoms and liberties.

Our Constitution addresses democracy and freedom, and this is translated today into Free Markets and Global Economy, but this sort of Capitalism will destroy out way of liberal thought.  This is true in both foreign and domestic policy.

Neither presidential candidate addressed this issue, and the "S" word (socialism) has been carefully excised from both party's national dialog.  The topic is not about what to do with General Motors or any other company, but rather, what are our national priorities and what are we?

Capitalism and Democracy have two competing sets of requirements, while our election cycles are always about Capitalism at the expense of Democracy.  Monetary concerns have clearly trumped Democratic concerns, at the latter's expense.

Mittsionary Position

 Never think that war, no matter how necessary,
nor how justified, is not a crime 
 --Ernest Hemingway

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can,
only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity 
--President Dwight D. Eisenhower

 History teaches that war begins when governments 
believe the price of aggression is cheap 
--Ronald Reagan

____________________ 

In a time of war, it is good to consider the capabilities of the Commander-in-Chief.

The U.S. hasn't had a military president since George H. W. Bush elected in 1998 (his son, George W. Bush, had registered with the Texas Air National Guard, but his service record is contentious.) Five Presidents beginning with Taft and ending with Hoover had no military experience, either; one of them elected to enter a war (Woodrow Wilson, World War I).  Most other U.S. Presidents had military experience.

We are entering a phase in our history when military service has become "professionalized", and is usually not the track taken by men who would enter the political domain.  Neither candidate in 2012 has a military background, so this is not a slam on either, but rather the Selective Service system itself.  Should the President and those who serve elected office have had the experience of military service?  Why is the leadership of the free world exercising his strength via ordering seemingly limitless warfare?  Could this be compensation?

Mitt Romney took a religious and educational deferments from 1965-70, until the downturn of combat in Vietnam.  Like former Vice President Cheney, he had other priorities.  How does doing a proselytizing stint afford one the same deferment as that of an ordained minister? Meanwhile the rest of us lived or died according to the vagaries of the draft laws.

Young men from factory neighborhoods like Ranger's were drafted and inducted to the max.  Ivy League dudes didn't puff out the ranks of the Infantry, Airborne or Special Forces in that period.  The American caste system plays out in terms of opportunities for advancement or death, and one's trajectory is determined almost at birth.

Who is to blame guys like Romney whose male stock successfully avoided or evaded active combat service for four generations? It is the Selfish Gene, writ large. Draft laws and tax laws have never been equable; the poor and near-poor will always carry an outsized burden.

And yet, men like Clinton, Obama and Romney seek war, foisting the responsibility for its execution onto others, and the hypocrisy bites.  An egalitarian society like that of the United States should seek to distribute burdens across the populace spectrum, lest favoritism and bitter resentment be our legacy.

These are odd times when a presidential contender promises in advance that he will get us into a major meltdown war if elected (Romney on Iran.)  The Republicans used to be isolationists; Eisenhower and Nixon were elected to end wars (in Korea and Vietnam). American presidents used to sue for peace and quality of life for all the nation's citizens.

When did the U.S. accept the mantle of being a nation of martial prowess led by draft exempted cheerleaders?

Better a platoon of sheep led by a lion than a platoon of lions led by a sheep.

Kissin' Cousins

The only one who could ever reach me
was the son of a preacher man
Oh yes he was 
--The Son of a Preacher Man,
Dusty Springfield 

 They are not "job creators" as Mitt Romney tells us.

They've been waiting for economy to die

so they can make billions - billions - on scams,

flim-flams and political, military muscling

--fr. Vultures' Picnic interview 

Aw shucks, it ain't nothing but possum tails,

owl gizzards, and grits fried in bear grease.

And then that there gravy --

that's just goat's milk with vulture eggs

and mashed catfish eyes   

--Kissin' Cousins (1964)

___________________

Some commentary spurred by the two bumper stickers in the Helen shop -- "WWRD: What Would Reagan Do?" and "Support Your Local Militia". 

Y'all folks on the more enlightened coast might not understand the obdurate nature of many Southeasterner's ignorance. (We understand that this stalwart conviction bleeds across the Midwest, too.)  While it is heartening that only 38% of respondents in a recent Gallup poll gave Romney's RNC speech positive marks, Americans are still impressible to manufactured emotions which define the unbridgeable chasms of modern politics.

Who cares what Reagan would do?  One thing is certain: Reagan would not be parading his issue across the stage like the good Republicans today preaching their family values.  Nope -- ballet dancer Ron Jr. and perennial malcontent Maureen would not have provided cozy bookends to that icon of the right.

We are such fools to devour the images which we believe define us and will make us safe.  We see Reagan on a screen, larger than life, and remember his presentation, forgetting the actuality of his term.  We see Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry or Josey Wales character and feel better. We see George W. Bush's or Reagan's ten gallon hat and feel secure; somehow, the bogeymen will not get us.

But what we refuse to see is that the bogeyman is already here, intertwined with every facet of our lives.  However you define the bad man, hovering in a convention hall among your fellows in silly hats will not save you.  Crying for less government will not extricate you.

Symbols and their real world referents have lost their connection.  Reagan and Eastwood represent Hollywood, which represents the distortion of truth and manufactured emotion.  Hollywood can only provide us real men before whom we suspend our disbelief.

Ann Romney's speech served the same function of delivering an image of ourselves of which we are not  actually a part.  She tried to feel our pain, but with her own personal Swiss bank account of $3 Million, we again see another disconnect between words and actuality, symbol and referent.

Surely the government has usurped powers and functions not intended by the Founding Fathers, but can or would we change that fact?  Does any man who aspires to be President actually intend to dilute the power to which he so desperately aspires?

While her husband Mitt has surely been a successful venture capitalist, how will his personal success translate to  into a benefit for the average American should he be elected?

This year, the choice is clear.  We can either elect a venture capitalist vulture, or award a second term to President Obama, a man who bailed out failed venture capitalists.  The center -- which defines America as we know it -- is gone.

It's a Hobson's Choice.

Sitting Ducks, Pt. II: Reagan Re-Ducks (Redux)

 Well we're living here in Allentown

And they're closing all the factories down

Out in Bethlehem they're killing time

Filling out forms

Standing in line 

--Allentown, Billy Joel

When the facts change, I change my opinion. 

What do you do sir?

 --John Maynard Keynes

_________________

We spent time in Athens, Ohio, home of Ohio University (OU).  Athens has a permanent population of 21,342, with about the same number of students attending the university; Athen County has a population of about 65,000. 51.9% of the population of Athens County, a former coal mining community, live below the poverty line; over 94% of Athens Co. is white.

$333 million in Federal Stimulus money has been spent in Athens since the inception of that program, or $111 per year (data from Athen's Visitor's Guide.)  Ranger thought to juxtapose the privations of a small Midwestern town with the $45 billion spent since 2007 on the MRAP vehicles alone.

Remember when a presidential race was won with the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid?"  This truism defeated a President (George H. W. Bush) who doted upon foreign policy versus the economy of his nation. While 2012 United States languishes in the same condition as then, President Obama leaves his foreign policy to Secretary Of State Clinton and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And foolish as this seems in terms of not addressing the dire needs of the nation which elected him, it may be savvy politicking: Whoever can out-Reagan Reagan will win.  Romney (and whomever the Republican machine would have tapped for candidate) must design himself as a Nuevo Reagan ... Reagan Redux.  The Democrats are also charged with meeting this bar, and Obama is coming fashionably close to out-gunning Mittens.

Considering what a sub-standard president Reagan was, his iconography is all the sadder.  But the Democrats have not found a viable contender to the Reagan brand and electioneering is acting, and no one out-acts an actor.

Of course, regardless of who out-draws whom, 50% of Athens County will still meander in the miasma that is poverty.  In this way alone, perhaps, they will share the situation of their elected leaders: Both will be signing checks on accounts with insufficient funds. 

(As an aside, the quick check cashing storefront in Athens features a colorful children's Playskool table and chair in the lobby; children should not have to be in fast cash establishments which charge their parents usurious 30+% interest.  It is not a good teaching point.)

No astrologer is needed to tell us too many of us are drawing on an NSF account.

War Path

We owe God a death
--Henry IV, Part 2

Not even God can change the past
--The Betrayal of America,
Vincent Bugliosi

Hence we can have no standing armies for defense,
because we have no paupers to furnish the materials
--Thomas Jefferson

Fascism will come to America
in the name of anti-fascism.
I'm afraid, based on my own long experience,
that fascism will come to America
in the name of national security
--Sen. Huey Long
________________

Our endless "Long Wars" pose the question: "What does America stand for?" Who are we, and what are out core values? Are our domestic and foreign policies in accord?

Why do we fight wars?

1914 saw the start of a Big War which grew out of an assassination which kicked into play interlocking treaties and alliances. The United States was neutral at the inception, having no treaty obligations to any of the belligerents. Up until World War I the United States only fought declared wars with England, Mexico and Spain, unilaterally in today's parlance. These wars were for sovereignty and land grabs.

Before 1914 there was 1813 and the Battle of Leipzig, the "Battle of Nations". The countries of Europe countered the great General Napoleon on the battlefield. The U.S. was fighting the Battle of New Orleans, and was interested only in territory and our nation's survival. The War of 1812 insured U.S. survival, and the nation stayed out of foreign entanglements, instead fighting its war against each other and against the Native Americans.

During the U.S.'s inner-focused period, Europe had Leipzig (Napoleon), the Crimean War, the Franco-Prussian War, The Russo-Jap War and various local flare ups. The U.S. kept its hands off. But then came 1914.

The Europeans continued their 500 year+ dance of death, but the U.S. had transmuted this war into a democratic endeavor. Being a beacon of democracy seemed to mandate our entrance (sound familiar?)

Entrance into WWI was a point of fracture in U.S. policy: the isolationists had lost out to the interventionists. But the transition was not to be seamless; the U.S. entered the war but failed to follow through, the isolationists defeating the U.S. entry into the League of Nations. This ambivalence of national definition has continued through to today.

In World War II the U.S. allied with Communism to defeat Fascism, yet then adopted fascist tactics to defeat Communism. The post war years saw the U.S. join the United Nations, even signing on to their manifesto declaring the Rights of Man. However, now we roamed the world in a military posture. It was an existential dichotomy which allowed the U.S. to lose sight of its lodestar.

Does the U.S. trust the UN, or is the lone swaggering sheriff of the world? Many U.S. presidential wars and regime change invasions have come and gone, and the issue of national definition goes undiscussed. We have entered today new territory in which our political parties favor tax cuts for their base, but also the maintenance of a strong military.

If the taxpaying voters oppose this practice, they have not made that clear. There has been no groundswell against the Long Wars favored by both parties, the people instead happily ensconcing themselves in their niche issues: gun control, gay marriage, reproductive rights -- things they can understand, and which make them feel moral.

It's 2012 and the same question remains to be addressed as in 1917, 1941, 1950, 1964-72, etc., namely, what does the country gain from intervening militarily in foreign wars? How does a democratic nation become a Warrior nation, when its roots were otherwise?

Where is our once-fear of standing Armies? How have we become so comfortable with preemptive invasions and attendant regime change? As Bugliosi wrote, even God can't change the past, but we seem comfortable re-writing history and reinterpreting the facts. We can even forget that we once hung people as war criminals when they conducted wars of aggression.

1813 - 1914 - 2012?

Take your pick, but rest assured that this topic will not be addressed in the entertainment we call the 2012 presidential election. It hardly even qualifies as infotainment.

Would you like a Ginzu knife with that candidate?