Politics: National

The best takedown I've read so far of the Joe Paterno/Penn State crime comes from Jim Kunstler. He ends with something I have pondered more than once: "Every new day that dawns lately gives further proof that we are a wicked people who deserve to be punished." As someone who grew up on the razzle-dazzle years of Frank Kush's Sun Devils, playing in the disrespected Western Athletic Conference and having teams such as Penn State, Michigan and Ohio State get all the attention, I never bought into the deification of Paterno. But who would have thought the fall would come from this. Child rape, a cover-up that lasted for years and more rotting shoes left to drop. As I wrote about Bishop O'Brien, he of the hit-and-run should-have-been vehicular homicide, crisis reveals character. The revelations continue to redefine disillusionment.

The study of history makes one wary of claiming something new or unprecedented. Monsters have always roamed in our midst. But the rotting corruption in nearly every important national institution is unlike anything I've come across in our history. In the American exceptionalism argument, I tend to come down on the side of exceptionalism, but today what makes us extraordinary is our criminality, ignorance and decadence. D.H. Lawrence wrote, "The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer." Maybe so. But it was once capable of grand and good things, especially through the collective institutions it built. No more.

Look anywhere. The Air Force can't be trusted to handle the remains of dead soldiers brought home, from wars our leaders lied us into and maintain and expand for the profit of defense contractors, as well as to lock up oil supplies because they won't come clean with us about future scarcity. The Great Recession is a product of corruption taken to stratospheric levels.

Remember when the Republicans were "the party of ideas"? Not birtherism, hastening the End of Days, denying the settled scientific facts of climate change or that the earth is 4,000 years old. No, this was the fumes, at least, of the intellectual conservatism that was built by William F. Buckley Jr. It was a philosophy not inured to facts or changing circumstances; indeed, it celebrated its suppleness compared with the rigid ideologies of the left. To be sure, it co-existed with reaction, racism and paranoia, but it was better than what we see in today's GOP presidential "debates." One idea was devolution, grounded not only in the proposition that the federal government had far exceeded its constitutional limits, but that it had become too big to be effective in many areas.

The answer: Devolve power to the states. Thus, if California wanted to have stringent environmental laws, for example, that was up to Californians. If Mississippi or Arizona envied the non-existent protections of air and water in the Third World, it was the business of those states, with no mandates coming from Washington. The same could be true for old-age pensions, health care, business regulation and subsidies, etc. etc. Let there be 50 laboratories of democracy.

This elegant idea faces practical problems. From the Progressive era through the Great Society, from Theodore to Franklin Roosevelt and beyond, most Americans realized that big challenges and needs could only be fulfilled by the federal government, with its size and power. Only the federal government could stand up against big business — this was a Progressive article of faith. Nor is it new. We tried the Articles of Confederation and they didn't work out well. Hamilton always argued for a robust central government, and although Jefferson is presented as his philosophical opposite, he didn't hesitate to employ federal power beyond the strict wording of the Constitution when it suited him, as in the Louisiana Purchase. The Confederacy started out to break away from the "tyranny" of the central government in Washington, yet Jeff Davis ended up creating every bit as powerful a (con)federal government in Richmond. There had never been a continental democracy before in history, and the American experience shows the need for a strong central government and a Constitution that can adapt.

David Axelrod's soothing words and the desire of the media for a horse race notwithstanding, I don't see how President Hoover can win re-election. He won't win Scott Walker's Wisconsin, nor destitute-crazy Ohio, nor "I got mine" geezer Florida that elected Marco Rubio and Rick Scott. Pennsylvania is rightly styled as Alabama sandwiched between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, so do the math. Virginia and North Carolina? Forget it.

As I have written before, Barack Obama does not deserve a second term. Two-term presidencies should be rare, not the rule. The wasted and toxic second terms of Bill Clinton (repealing Glass-Steagall, for example) and George W. Bush are instructive. And while Mr. Obama was a gifted orator, his election the first time was also a vote against Bush, against the recklessness of a John McCain who would put Sarah Palin on a national ticket, and, in a fleeting moment of clarity, against the GOP, The Party That Wrecked America. It won't happen again.

Crazy is an easier default setting for an ignorant empire in decline. So we must begin to consider the Republican field.

Before Rogue resumes its regular commentary schedule next week, here are a few things that couldn't help but distract me from book-writing (and this was before I saw the New York Times' shocking story today on deforestation and climate change). Our perpetual state of war continues, moving more into Yemen and Somalia with secret CIA and DOD drone bases. Now American citizens can be targeted, without due process, for hellfire missiles. And while we may say al-Awlaki had it coming, one must wonder if hellfire missiles along with the entire security apparatus erected since 9/11/01 will not eventually be used in the streets and even cul-de-sacs of America. We're still leaving Iraq on George W. Bush's timetable. Did we "win"? Tom Ricks writes that somebody did, and it wasn't us, except for the "us" that's involved in the Military-Industrial Complex and D.C. real estate. We have become such a moral beacon to the world that Iran cited Gitmo in holding those U.S. "hikers" in solitary.

The economy is worse now than a month ago, and more analysts, economists and commentators are realizing a point I made some time ago: We're in depression territory. We don't have to be, but the cowardice of the Obama administration combined with the nihilism of the Republicans, all under the umbrella of the quiet coup of moneyed interests, have left us paralyzed and bewildered. The Occupy Wall Street movement is noble but small and mostly ignored by the corporate media. True, if the same numbers were Tea Party members, they would garner nationwide coverage.

Friends keep telling me of the coming working-class revolt (Mark Thoma writes about such here). I'll believe it when I see it. Civil insurrection is certainly likely as America continues its downward course, but it will play out with minorities burning their own neighborhoods and the whites and other better-offs retreating even deeper into suburban apartheid. The Revolution in a nation of dolts could only be caused by taking away television, video games, smart phones and cheap gasoline. Then, to the barricades!

Some of the best reading (worth your time), ten years later:

NEW: A nation that no longer knows itself || Washington Post

NEW: Mission accomplished — for bin Laden || Talton/Seattle Times

Ten jobs that barely existed on 9/10/01 || Wired

Sept. 11th: The day that never ends || Washington Post

Can the United States move beyond the narcissism of 9/11? || The Guardian

Putting the question to Dick Cheney || Harpers

The true cost of 9/11: A weaker America || Joe Stiglitz in Slate

Come to one of my book signings and 200 people might be in the crowd (or five people). Except for my de-facto bodyguard, maybe only a handful will be men. On a good night. Men don't read anymore. This is one of the most frightening of the many express-elevator-to-the-dark-ages changes that have happened to America in my lifetime. Of course there are outliers, on this blog for example, or the new head librarian in Seattle, a man who said he fell in love with libraries as a fourth grader. Men read technical manuals and comic books. But the well-read American male of the past is mostly gone. Although all Americans are reading less — one survey found that the typical citizen reads only four books a year and one in four reads none at all — men are the biggest drop outs. They account for only 20 percent of the fiction market.

I can't imagine living in this mental poverty. When I turned nine years old, one of the first things I did was get a card at the Phoenix Public Library (the earliest age one could qualify). Before that, the one pure joy of Kenilworth School was the well-stocked library. I grew up around readers and books. My great aunt had an especially impressive library, and it made up for otherwise dull visits to her acreage on Seventh Avenue. My childhood reading wasn't highbrow: I was especially entranced by C.B. Colby's military books (Our Space Age Navy, etc.). But I read. These included comic books, too, but by age ten or so, comics were boring (not so for people today). Books have taken me places I would otherwise never have visited, from Plato's Athens and hell with Dante, to the Battle of Berlin. Books changed my mind and made it changeable. I never intended to be a journalist or author. I just assumed that experience was one a well-rounded person should have. Books used to be sexy. Really desirable women expected well-read men, and reading to one's lover is a sensual delight.

No longer for most. Aside from the polls, anecdotal evidence comes my way constantly: My son doesn't read books…My husband never reads…I don't read books…Never did like books. Is it any wonder that this has accompanied our society's collapse into widespread anti-intellectualism and aggressive ignorance (because to understand that, one would have read, say, Richard Hofstadter).

The first modern social security program was begun by that notorious bleeding heart Otto von Bismarck in the 1880s. With it, the Iron Chancellor successfully undercut the socialists and communists, kept peace with the working class and helping Germany become a major power until he was dismissed by Kaiser Bill and the fuse was lit on the bloody 20th century. American Social Security began in the New Deal after a long fight with reactionaries and they've never let go of their dream of destroying it. Social Security is one of those "entitlements" we keep hearing about from our leaders in politics and business, as well as in the media, that must be "reformed."

I don't know about you, but I've worked full time since I was seventeen-and-a-half, paying for the Greatest Generation's Social Security. It is hardly an "entitlement," a word loaded with welfare for the undeserving. It is a social insurance program where younger generations pay for the retirement of older generations, and it's worked fine for 70 years. But no small amount of oldsters now want to break this foundation of the social compact. They got theirs. Now the dastardly baby boomers will "break the system." Well, no. Social Security is fine and needs, at best, modest modifications. Unfortunately, even President Hoover, the supposed leader of the supposed Democratic Party, accepts the premise that broad "entitlement reform" is a sine qua non of fixing America.

So went the famous 2003 quote from Gen. David Petraeus concerning the Iraq war. More about him later. But as the Great Disruption once again sends us further down the mountainside, it's an apt question for the American experiment in self-government, the economy, our society.

One way it doesn't end is with a great backlash against the extremism that now controls the Republican Party. Wisconsin gave its best shot with fierce protests and recall elections but failed. Reactionary Republicans still hold power in the home of Robert La Follette. When this week's recall contests were over, it was clear that corporate money will have its way. Not only that, but majorities in suburbia, which is most of the country, will vote GOP no matter whether this is in their economic or civic interests. Whatever the polls say about Republican unpopularity, not much will change in the next election. For that to happen, America would need a viable opposition party.

It doesn't end with President Hoover "finding his voice." The listless recitation of pleas for balanced approaches and bipartisanship we heard on Monday, as the stock market was panicking, is his voice. He is weak. He is passive. He is a creature of the Robert Rubin/bankster wing of the Democratic Party, which shares the dream of "reforming entitlements." He will not fight for the middle class, for jobs, for fair play. I think of the late Jeff MacNelly's brutally on-target political cartoons of Jimmy Carter, who became smaller and smaller in the presidential chair.

As I write, the Dow is down 350 points and the stock market has given up all its gains for the year. Never fear: The rich have already moved into safe havens — and those with some exposure are a little less rich. Everyone seems to agree that "the game is up," as one financial analyst told me. But which game? That America and Europe are "broke" and must dismantle their "lavish public sectors and entitlements"? Or that crony capitalism, imperial overstretch, failure to invest in education and job-creating infrastructure by the richest nation in history is the losing game? The former have won the argument with barely any resistance from President Hoover and the Democrats. The results will be a catastrophe. The Tea Partiers are cleverly, or stupidly, claiming this austerity doesn't go far enough. That way, when it fails, they can claim victory and demand more ideological purity, rather like the apologists for Soviet communism.

We may not be looking at another recession. We may be in a Depression. For many, if not most, Americans, the recovery was chimerical. Their troubles began in the '00s, with stagnant incomes and the worst record of job creation since the real President Hoover. When the housing bubble crashed and the stock market followed, the were financially ruined. Now 24 million are unemployed or under-employed. And that was all before the federal government embarked on an austerity plan that might please Robert Rubin but otherwise guarantees more recession.

So how will Depression 2.0 be different from the Great Depression?

As the planet warms faster than the most fearful scientists predicted, as peak oil stares us grimly in the face, as the full faith and credit of the United States government is put at risk in order to bring down that (black) man in the White House, as the middle class craters and all the good in the America in which I grew up is looted, profaned and destroyed, McDonald's will make Happy Meals more healthy. The right moves in disciplined lock-step, seeking and winning a few large victories. The "left," such as it is, remains distracted by innumerable enthusiasms. So the health Nazis win one and gay people can marry in New York. Smokers, but not extremists, have been made second-class citizens. What does this matter compared with the real game that is taking place horrifically before our cow-like stares?

As expected, President Hoover and the corrupt/enervated Democratic Party gave away any tax increases in the debt-ceiling stand-off. The results of this "balanced approach" will be years, if not decades, of economic and social destruction. The Republicans have a partner in their cherished ambition to dismantle Social Security, the Great Society and the New Deal in the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As with the 24 million un- or underemployed Americans in a nation of 301 million, the damage will begin at the margins and not be fully felt for years.

The dysfunction in Washington may be felt much sooner, if the debt ceiling is not raised. Count on the fearsome deficit and debt to go away the moment that President Romney or Bachmann is sworn in. And depend on the right to have ready-made explanations for the chaos and destruction that are now guaranteed whether we get a deal or not. Their superstition and dogma will call for even more government cuts. Unions and public workers are the problem. Business isn't hiring because of too many regulations. Climate change is a hoax. All this will be dutifully reported by the media as if it is a perfectly legitimate response.

We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that government by organized money is just as dangerous as government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. — Franklin Roosevelt

It's true I give a good speech. What can I do? — Barack Obama

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism. — Herbert Hoover

We do not need clairvoyance to predict the general outcome from the protracted and ugly debt-ceiling negotiations between President Hoover and the House Republicans. This is because, contrary to the the mainstream media narrative, Washington is not composed of equal parts of hardcore conservatives, hardcore liberals and centrists, with the only trick being for them to get along and "stop acting like children."

In reality, one of the two major parties has become totally captured by extremist ideology that would make William F. Buckley turnabout his sailboat and head for France. The other party, the Democrats, are leaderless, captured by corporate interests and lacking any major liberal lions. Liberalism is essentially dead in America as far as governing is concerned, a development with far-reaching and unexamined consequences. Over all this, and interlocked with the right-wing machine, is unprecedented corporate control of the government, from the statehouses to Washington, D.C. More than $50 million has been spent this year alone in lobbying Congress to further weaken regulation of Wall Street and the big banks.

Finally, President Hoover is not willing to fight, much less for liberalism or for the American middle class. He seems desperate to grasp at virtually every "deal" that floats daily before his finely chiseled face. The latest, according to Talking Points Memo, is that good ole "grand bargain" that would involve massive spending cuts "set in stone," with maybe "revenues some time in the future." Whatever the final settlement, this is the trajectory. It's time to consider how this will play out.

I have reached the point where I say enough. Would Ronald Reagan be sitting here? I've reached my limit. This may bring my presidency down, but I will not yield on this.

So said the president in Tuesday's "stormy" debt-ceiling meeting with Republican leaders, according to news reports. No, Ronald Reagan wouldn't be sitting there. He would have already worked out a deal with his fellow Irishman, Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill. The debt ceiling was raised repeatedly and uneventfully during the Gipper's deficit binge. Will Mr. Obama yield? Of course. He's already surrendered to the fraudulent assumptions of the right-wing radicals: That government "must tighten its belt" during the worst economy since the Depression, that spending and the dreaded deficit/debt are our biggest problem, even that Medicare and Social Security must be on the chopping block.

Some of you are offended when I refer to him as President Hoover, the self-made man who started as a progressive but became trapped by his gratitude of reaching the elite and his own mental limitations at a time of tectonic change. Perhaps you're right. Other examples come to mind: Jimmy Carter without the Southern Baptist sanctimony. And William Howard Taft.

If you missed the news, the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge is being built in China as modules to be assembled in California. Fourteen million Americans are officially unemployed and the U-6 (real) rate of unemployment in the Golden State is 22 percent. The project is, according to the New York Times, "part of China’s continual move up the global economic value chain — from cheap toys to Apple iPads to commercial jetliners — as it aims to become the world’s civil engineer." The original Bay Bridge was built during the Great Depression by Americans, employing thousands and, along with other infrastructure investments of the era, stimulating numerous American industries. We used to do these things and do them well. But no more. We buy plastic tubs from China at Wal-Mart to fill with other stuff we buy from China at Wal-Mart while working, if we're lucky, at stagnant- or low-wage jobs. We're crazy.

The last space shuttle mission is scheduled to begin Friday. After that, we cede space low-earth orbit to the Russians, who I guess won the space race after all, and more important exploration to China and India. In my lifetime, we put men on the moon, not because it was easy but because it was hard. NASA has been neglected since the Nixon administration, with the inadequate shuttles our only manned program. Now, nothing. We're told the private sector will take over. And it will do this…how? Why? Corporate America is sitting on its profits, not hiring Americans, not investing in America. I don't doubt some or another space boondoggle using federal corporate welfare, but Boeing is not going to take us to Mars. Where's the profit margin? We once did great things. Now we're crazy.

The Republicans are playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded gun on the debt ceiling. President Hoover is busy, as usual, negotiating against himself, begging for a few hundred billion in tax hikes while conceding trillions in budget cuts. These will only slow the economy at a time when the federal government should be aggressively investing in infrastructure (and not "roads and bridges"). Last I checked, Mr. Hoover has put Social Security on the table. Who needs John Boehner when the nominally Democratic president will give the social compact the coup de grace by himself. The nation sits cow-like as this transpires. The richest nation in history is "broke," we're told. Taxes can't be raised. It would hurt those precious "job creators," even though the Bush/Obama tax cuts have been an abysmal, demonstrable failure. Average Americans vote to protect the interests of the oligarchs. How else to explain it but…crazy.