Politics: National

I've tweeted Al Gore's must-read "Climate of Denial" several times. This eloquent piece goes in depth about the media's complicity in keeping climate change out of the degraded public square. Yet nobody re-tweeted it. People have stopped listening to the former vice president (even as his vile successor's policies remain in place). Yet I wonder if there's anything more important than this for progressives.

Gay marriage? A historic victory in New York, but the cultural right has been losing this one for some time. Wall Street contributions helped, and why not — gays are a very lucrative demographic. Some of Seattle's anarchists trashed Capitol Hill early Sunday, ahead of the Pride Parade, to protest the co-option of gay rights by commercial culture. So it's an easy gimme by the oligarchy, while it continues to destroy the planet. Should climate change be for the left what "tax cuts" are for the right?

President Obama is happy to let it lie. He's the best Republican president since George H.W. Bush. Yet he faces re-election in 2012 and I don't buy the meme that he's a shoe-in because of the craziness of the right.

Last night, I finished the late Alan Bullock's magnificent book, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. It's a reminder that no matter how much one has studied a topic, he or she can have vast new landscapes opened by the best historians as tour-guides. The book was completed just as the Soviet empire that Stalin built was falling apart, and the moment was marked by the greatest hope. Yet Bullock also reminded us of the bloody paths that contingency can create, particularly when broad social, economic and cultural forces and destabilization ("history from below") are harnessed by evil genius ("history from above"). The book ends with a deeply moving coda of promise. But that comes after a thousand pages examining the two greatest mass murderers in history; worse, men who could move nations to do their killing.

I think about all this as we sit seemingly becalmed, summer opening. Americans could be forgiven a moment of desire for, as Frank Fukuyama put it, the end of history after the long standoff of the Cold War. But this is not 1989-90. Now we are a nation of simpletons in denial. Thus, President Obama could make a speech about Afghanistan where the media report it as if we're actually leaving this hopeless morass. He can say, "it's time to focus on nation-building here at home" but he lacks the conviction to build even one — just one — segment of true high-speed rail. We treat Randian ravings as serious policy options and allow the cruelest policies to be passed by those who also brandish their "Christian" values at every speech. One of our two major political parties' platforms is essentially based on returning America to the 1880s, without a frontier and with more than 300 million people in a complex society.

As I write this morning, I see headlines for stories saying the United States and its allies will "release 60 million barrels of oil to offset supply disruptions caused by unrest in Libya." And presumably also to help keep gas prices down for the trip to Wal-Mart (recent acquisition: the U.S. Supreme Court). And they note oil prices fell. I want to scream, "America uses 20 million barrels of oil every day and China is fast catching up, you fools! Prices are falling because of fears of a new recession!" But, in a calmer state, I think, maybe it's me. I don't understand the new rules of engagement:

You know me: I am more of the school that sometimes history rhymes (Mark Twain) than history repeats itself. Nevertheless, as the Great Disruption continues and, as a conservative commenter wrote on my Seattle Times blog, "How's that hopey-changey thing working out for you," we are required to take stock. We face a mammoth debt and deficit, mostly because of the Bush/Obama tax cuts, the wars and the Great Recession. Speaking of which, no major criminal prosecutions have resulted from the greatest assemblage of frauds in history leading the world financial system to the brink of collapse. In fact, the banksters, hedge-fund boyz and other Wall Street playerz are doing better than ever. The 14 million "officially" unemployed, along with tens of millions of others, not so much. The middle class is imploding as the social compact is badly damaged. President Hoover, like his namesake, has surrounded himself with agents of the plutocracy — the difference being that the real Herbert Hoover never would have remained embroiled in two simultaneous wars and ruinous defense spending.

Every day the question grows louder for those paying attention: What the hell is happening to us?

Cullen Murphy, an editor at Vanity Fair, took it head on with his book, Are We Rome? As a review in Salon put it, "He argues that America, like Rome, is threatened by self-inflicted wounds — in particular our mania for privatization, our fading belief in government and the ensuing decay of civic society, our vast and unsustainable military, our ignorance of the outside world and our short-sighted attitude toward immigration and assimilation."

I taught at a small college in Oklahoma years ago, then started my journalism "career" there. One of the first things I learned is that Oklahoma, along with Singapore, has the most intense thunderstorms in the world along with their attendant tornadoes. Nearly every day in the spring and early summer, they form atop New Mexico's spookily beautiful Caprock bluffs and then move east. So many days I would see a black line along the horizon in the morning. In the middle of the day, the darkness might be so complete that the streetlights would come on. Tornado watches were routine; warnings and sirens things to dread. Drenching rain, golfball-sized hail and then violent wind were commonplace during the season. People watched carefully for the formation of a funnel — if they could see the sky in the darkness and rain. Major damage was more rare in the rolling woods of the eastern part of the state; west of I-35, watch out. The movie Twister, for all of Helen Hunt's considerable charms, doesn't even begin to capture the terrifying majesty of an Oklahoma storm.

All the old-timers had Tornado Alley lore. About pieces of straw driven through telephone poles. About the freak contingency of the storms: How one side of a street might be leveled and the other look as if nothing at all were amiss. About cars picked up and put down yet the occupants lived. And the little towns that once existed before being swept off the map. Every town has a section that is prone to get hit. Soon you learned your own storm wisdom, such as the strange color of the sky after a twister-laden front had moved past. Before coming to Arizona Territory in the late 19th century, my great-grandparents lived in Indian Territory, the eastern half of what became the state of Oklahoma. A tornado was my grandmother's earliest memory: Of being carried into a shelter before the monster leveled the little settlement, killing one of her sisters.

I think about this in the aftermath of the Joplin, Mo., tornado. The region suffers through the occasional bad year, where the most intense level of tornadoes can even destroy brick buildings. The so-called "super outbreak" of 1974 is the prime example, where 148 twisters struck 13 states on April 3 and 4. There was Terrible Tuesday in 1979, when an EF-4 — reportedly five-miles wide at one point — lethally struck the suburban edge of Wichita Falls, Texas. It was part of a storm that ravaged the Red River Valley, coming way too close to the little college town where I lived. Now we're living through another super outbreak year: Nearly 1,000 tornadoes and 500 dead. Or we're entering something different.

The Kooks have caught up with me. The trolls come with the position of columnist and blogger. Still, and even after all those years at the Republic, I'm still struck by their level of vitriol. Someone is never merely misinformed, misguided, or holds a position worth debating on a complex issue. No, to these folks, one is not merely "stupid" and "ignorant," but acting in bad faith and allied with evil forces if not one himself. They learn this from talk radio and Fox "News," of course, and some right-wing organizations actually pay people to post talking-point comments. What's most arresting is that they don't merely want to disagree — they want you fired.

On a recent innocuous economy blog post, I got this comment: "I just read the rest of the comments, I'm glad I'm not the only one that has figured out that Jon Talton is a total idiot… Mr. or Mrs. Editor… This has been going on for a long time now, why is he still here??? Do you not read any of his articles??? He's as white and male as it gets you can fire him in a heartbeat and you won't even get sued…" Again, the rocks come with the farm and the trolls come with the blog. I'm not the shy and retiring kind, and newspapers once didn't want this with their columnists. Columnists run a range of opinions, including many from the right. So why would you want to take away a person's job because you disagree with him? Why would you want to do it in this economy particularly? I paid the price for antagonizing the powerful and Kooky in Phoenix, even when mine was one dissenting voice in an otherwise right-leaning, boosterish newspaper. Take his job. Shut him up. It's a fascinating phenomenon.

So I kind of feel for Newt Gingrich, former House Speaker and presidential candidate. On Meet the Press, he was asked about the Paul Ryan plan to replace Medicare with vouchers. Gingrich responded: "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering.  I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate." He added that the Ryan plan "is too big a jump.  I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the — I don't want to — I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change." The attacks from the right began immediately.

I've been reading too much lately about Stalin and Hitler. Nobody, least of all Marx, thought communism could succeed in such a backward country as Russia. Lenin woke up too late to Stalin's menace (not that Leninism didn't inevitably lead to mass murder), and Trotsky sulked in his tent while the Man of Steel took over. And how could the civilization that gave us Bach, Beethoven, Goethe and Mann also have voted in, and widely supported, the deranged former corporal who would shed so much blood? We look back and say, "Of, course!"

I think about all this as President Hoover, apparently under pressure from a serial failed businessman with a bad comb-over, released the long-form of his birth certificate, hoping to stop the birther "silliness." It won't. Nearly half of the members of the Party of Lincoln don't believe the president was born in the United States. Does anyone think this would have traction, much less enough to cause the president to sully the dignity of his office by addressing it, if his name were Barry O'Bama and he were white? But with any Democrat in the highest office, it would be something. When George W. Bush won the 2000 election under highly questionable circumstances, Al Gore was a class act and most Democrats went along with a radical Bush agenda despite the close division of the electorate. But with Republicans, the very idea of a Democrat as president is illegitimate, any progressive or liberal idea is accursed. Here's a Tweet from Arizona state Sen. Jack Harper, R.-Surprise: "If Jon's socialistic friends gets our guns, will they turn 2 communism 2 redistribute the wealth? #UnitedNations" No, he's wasn't kidding.

The nation that indeed brought a "new order of the ages," built the transcontinental railroad, landed men on the moon and made countless contributions to the arts and sciences now can't do anything but hope for a new housing boom and cheap gas. Our exceptionalism has devolved into ignorance, hate, denial, swindles and madness. We have made a retrograde move into television-addled peasantry, into self-inflicted serfdom. Many Americans believe things every bit as absurd, and dangerous, as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For them, "the stab in the back" of 1918 is illegal immigrants, taxes and people of color having babies. Who knows where this will lead? Only 25,000 Bolsheviks carried off a revolution in a nation of about 160 million. Is all we're lacking the right scheming Georgian or failed painter to take us to full darkness? Will those surviving will look back and say, "Of course"?

Gonna come a time when we all gonna hafta ante up. Ante up and kick in like men. LIKE MEN! — John Rawlins (Morgan Freeman) in the movie Glory.

It may not matter that the polls are against Paul Ryan in his attempt to replace Medicare with meager vouchers. He and the Republicans in Congress are setting the terms of the debate: Roll back the Great Society. Roll back the New Deal. Weaken and eliminate the foundations of the social compact. President Hoover is a weak tribune for such a battle. What "middle ground" will he find in his journey of compromise and community organizing in the far right of center, aided by the guidance of his tax-dodging economic mandarin Jeffrey Immelt? It's astounding that any of this is even happening. Yet it is.

Want to deal with the debt and deficit? Stop the wars. Pull out of most of those 150 countries where we have a military presence. Stop the corporate welfare, especially subsidizing fossil fuel extraction. Raise taxes on individuals. Go after the tax evasion of the big corporations. Tax the gambling on Wall Street. Invest in productivity-enhancing and job-creating infrastructure, universities, research and public education. If  big business wants to get cute and threaten to leave, or hold a capital strike, fine. Play like the Chinese: Want entry to America's market (which is still the largest and richest in the world)? Play by our rules or else. Even that wouldn't be necessary if we returned to the checks and balances of healthy American capitalism. Anyway, do all this before you talk about putting your Grover Norquist drowning hands on my Social Security and Medicare (which, by the way, are not entitlements).

None of that's going to happen, for reasons we've discussed many times on this blog, including this recent post. So the question before us is, what next? What happens when the GOP gets control of the Congress and White House in 2012 or 2016 and is able to implement the Randian vision already in play in places such as New Jersey and Wisconsin?

It is no secret that a faction of the Republican Party has always dreamed of rolling back the part of the New Deal that survived FDR's eventual reconciliation with big business, as well as laying waste to LBJ's Great Society. When America had two mass parties, each with real liberals, moderates and conservatives, this was not the program of Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford or George H.W. Bush. It was not even the aspiration of Ronald Reagan, who went to his dotage holding Franklin Roosevelt as his hero. But now it is in change. It sets the parameters of the debate. America is headed into truly uncharted territory and it's not going to be pretty. Last week's cowardly deal on the part of President Hoover to keep the government open is just the start. We have hit multiple inflection points that make this unavoidable. Put another way, the chickens are coming home to roost, and they're lethal.

Revenues: Thirty years of tax cutting has snowballed into disaster. Combined with two wars that have lasted longer than World War II, military deployments in more than 150 nations, corporate welfare and the cost of the Great Recession, voodoo economics has left America with a substantial deficit and debt. Tax cuts have not delivered on their promise of job creation or widespread prosperity. Quite the opposite. But the American mentality now is that taxes can only be cut. In fact, at every level of government taxes are too low. The United States has the lowest taxes among advanced nations, and in this survey only Mexico and Chile are lower, nations that are hardly analogous to America or role models. Contrary to the widespread propaganda, the deficit and debt are not an immediate emergency. Yet they are serious enough to attract attention, and become useful ammo for demagogues on the right who peddle the notion that we face disaster because of spending on poor gay union people of color seeking foreign-aid abortion earmarks. That the solemn obligations of Social Security and Medicare are the root cause. Our supposedly liberal/socialist/Islamofascist president has bought into the right-wing narrative: America has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. In reality, low tax rates are most to blame. They have finally been reduced, at every level of government, to crisis-inducing levels.

Ignorance. The condition above would not be possible without the rise of broad illiteracy in citizenship, history, economics and critical thinking. It it no coincidence, as the commies used to say, that our troubles have worsened amid the widespread death of newspapers and a shallow, "good news" focus in too many of the survivors. Indeed, fewer Americans read newspapers or anything at all. Men are especially prone to not read and fewer men go to college. Even most college graduates lack grounding in the liberal arts. Despite the right-wing pose of defending Western Civ, we have a nation of grads from business and professional silos, including from the for-profit "college" flimflam, with no sense of the obligations of citizenship or American history. Thus, the issues we discuss on this blog are either unintelligible or "depressing." They know nothing of the delicate balances and pluralism that created the best of modern America. They wants to be entertained, to be told comforting fables and, as things head south, to be fed easy (even if the wrong) villains. Too many have thus been easy pickings for the corporate media and talk radio that promulgate and pass on right-wing propaganda. Like tax revenue, this situation has been deteriorating for years. We have finally hit the wall.

So President Hoover wants another term. I ask, why? None of the major banksters has gone to jail. The too-big-to-fail banks are even bigger and back to risky business. Nearly 14 million are unemployed, millions more underemployed or have given up looking for work. A record number of Americans are on food stamps. We have not merely two wars but three. Gitmo is still open and corporate lawyer Eric Holder made a cowardly about-face from trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the criminal he is in New York. BP committed the worst environmental disaster in our history, but deepwater drilling is back. Income inequality is at record highs. I could go on, and will shortly.

Most progressives are either defending the president, still hoping he's "playing chess" and all will work out, or will hold their noses and support him for fear of a worse Republican alternative. Perhaps anticipating my antipathy, commenter Koreyel made a post a few weeks ago that deserves to be quoted at length:

You go into the future with the population you have and not the population you wish you had. Look at the population we have. We don't know much about anything. Do we? So much so, I've thought of starting a blog to capture every news item that begins  "half of all Americans don't know." Steve Allen saw it coming years ago. He gave it a name. He called it Dumbth. It's now here in the flesh and running for president in 2012. And you too can become a fan of it on Facebook.

In trying to understand what seems to be, well, I don't know a delicate way to put it, the growing goatfuck in Libya, I turned to Professor Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog is one of the best sources of analysis on the Middle East. He lists ten ways that the Libyan intervention is not Iraq 2003. Among them, the action has UN Security Council authorization; the Libyan people "had risen up and thrown off the Qaddafi regime, with some 80-90 percent of the country having gone out of his hands before he started having tank commanders fire shells into peaceful crowds"; civilians were being massacred and worse was to follow, and the Arab League calling for action.

Maybe. But I can't help this nagging feeling that Uncle Sucker has once again been lured into a Wilsonian/Bushian "make the world safe for democracy" swindle, while more complex, hypocritical, realpolitik, cynical and sinister forces are at work. It is no surprise that France pushed hard for action, not wanting to be on the receiving end of a million impossible-to-assimilate Muslim refugees, but Mr. Carla Bruni will publicize this with Liberté, égalité, fraternité. No surprise, either, that Arab League members started to squawk once the cruise missiles began landing. It's reminiscent of the days when the United States would take out some dictator in Latin America, bringing instant public condemnation of "imperialism!" by leaders in the region who were saying, sotto voce, "Thank God they got him!" And how nice to make our Chinese debt-holders squirm even a little at the prospect that the next popular uprising just might show up outside their politburo meeting. 

Still, what's the end game here? No Fly Zones are well and good and militarily…what? Actually, the only NFZ I know that was working was the one we maintained for a decade against Saddam Hussein. Otherwise, the intervention must expand or fail, for the good colonel is not committing most of his civilian killings with air power, but with ground forces. So, as Sir Sean Connery's character demands of Kevin Costner's Eliot Ness in The Untouchables, "What are you prepared to do?" One can't escape the conclusion that President Hoover and Mrs. Clinton didn't really think that one through, and Bob Gates was just too damned tired or distracted to intervene. Instead of World War III, we'll just have three wars in the world, sapping America. Forgive me for imagining the cynical Europeans and Perfidious Albion (the Royal Navy fired one cruise missile on the day the attack began) are just itching for a way to hand the mess off to us.

I am suspicious of all unified field theories, including my own. Still, we have entered a new age and must try to explain and understand it. I am with James Howard Kunstler's "Long Emergency" in many areas. But I don't think the federal government will collapse anytime soon; crises tend to centralize power — even the Roman Empire took centuries to fall apart in the West, longer still in the East. Nor do I think small-scale food production and small towns will replace cities; cities have the power and wealth to draw resources, and metropolitan areas will be the economic and organizing entities of the 21st century, barring a major nuclear war. Nor do I accept Dmitry Orlov's theory that America will collapse along the lines of the Soviet Union.

I call the new age the Great Disruption. It is on display in Japan, where one of the most advanced nations in the world is struggling with a devastating earthquake and an unfolding nuclear disaster. The planet is at 6.8 billion people, at or beyond its carrying capacity. This will amplify the natural disasters that are a normal part of the world, bringing much more widespread death and misery to the Haitis and Indonesias, but not sparing advanced nations. The United States has nearly doubled its population in my lifetime. This not only adds huge costs that we have not addressed, in infrastructure to use one example, but also vulnerabilities (and lack of spending on infrastructure to soften disasters, e.g. New Orleans). A major earthquake in Seattle or San Francisco today would be catastrophic, and both are inevitable. And lest Phoenicians feel smug, they are downwind from the largest nuclear power plant in the nation, one with a highly checkered safety record, getting older, and whose water supply in an emergency should be question No. 1 for the press. This on top of (over) populating one of the most hostile desert valleys and basins in the world, a totally manmade environment, totally vulnerable to tribulation.

Overpopulation is a backbeat for most of the other elements of the Great Disruption. But most of all it is about discontinuity The next 30 years are not going to be a replay of the past 30, only with cooler personal tech toys. Why not?