Language and the Will to Power - Part 1

I’m bemused by the trend, in recent years, of obfuscating, conflating and downright deliberate abuse of our language – especially our political language. It has left people confused (perhaps intentionally) about some basic terms and that, in turn, has left them confused about the realities of our current social/political/economic situation. This may seem picayune to some, after all harping on the language used to describe events can’t hold a candle to actually dealing with those events, right? Well, not so much; to the extent that we use and abuse language we define or obscure what we’re talking about. This is done in two ways: first by ignorance, people who are not clear about their subject or the definitions of the words they are using are red meat for the propagandists. The second way is by design. This is the special world of propaganda/advertising where the word and the meme are deliberately twisted to serve a commercial and/or political end. As Orwell pointed out, this is an unparalleled tool for establishing and maintaining control of a market or a society. And tyrannies of the left and the right have used it assiduously even a casual look at history will provide numerous examples.


I‘m very concerned with how this is playing out today. Right here and right now the meanings of words are being twisted for public consumption – see anything written by George Lakoff and Frank Luntz for details on this trend. I want to examine the definitions of some political/economic concepts so we can try to determine how the concepts are twisted by the misuse of words and how that relates to the difference between what we’re told is going on to what actually happening in reality.


First, some definitions (I got these from Wikipedia for simplicity’s sake, if you distrust Wikipedia go look them up in the Encyclopedia Britannica, or any other unbiased authority you respect, they’re functionally the same).

Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources. Additional definitions can be found here.


Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy). Additional definitions can be found here.

Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Additional definitions can be found here.

Corporatism is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body. Additional definitions can be found here.


Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit. Additional definitions can be found here.

Right enough, I have some quibbles about these definitions – from my more leftward perspective and I’ll be mentioning some of them – I’m sure many others have rightward quibbles themselves. I’m less concerned with what these definitions say than with what they leave out or ignore altogether.


We throw these words around without examining their roots. We use them as epithets to cudgel our opponents and in doing so, we strip them of their meaning and substitute the buzzword soundbite – useful only as agitprop which stirs anger (with extra foam) and drowns discourse and understanding.


The roots of these definitions lie in our nature as humans and in our innate understanding of the world around us. It comes down to money and power and how we behave around them.


This can’t be a surprise to anyone who looks at the evidence but we generally don’t take the time to examine the structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’, let’s take a quick look at them right now, maybe we can shed some light…


Parsing definitions


Let’s start with Socialism (guaranteed to drive right wingers crazy).

Socialism is an economic and political theory advocating public or common ownership and cooperative management of the means of production and allocation of resources.

Well, first of all, I think it’s more than a theory. Socialism has been enacted, more or less successfully, by several nation states and other socio-political entities around the world. In fact, despite the frantic efforts of the corporatists/fascists to deny it, the most successful societies in the world today are socialist. I refer to the Scandinavian nations, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland (more about Iceland later). This is only, of course, if you believe that the purpose of society is to provide the best possible standard of living for all of its citizens.


Our own Anglo-Saxon heritage is socialist to the extent that it is based on the concept of ‘the commons’, a community supported grazing field that would support anyone’s cattle or sheep if there were a famine or a flood. More to the point, we have a sterling example of socialist behavior right here in the middle of River City: a public entity that provides cooperative management of the means of production and allocates resources to that end – the Pentagon… think about it for a minute and see if you don’t agree. Or rather see if you aren’t forced to agree…
These things get tricky once you really start thinking about them…
More on this later on…


Moving on to Democracy, the ne plus ultra of American political worship.

Democracy is a political form of government in which governing power is derived from the people, either by direct referendum (direct democracy) or by means of elected representatives of the people (representative democracy).

Very careful language here, almost as if the writers suspected a trap. That’s not surprising as there has been virtually no credible, viable, direct democracy, ever, anywhere.


Think I’m joking? Let’s look at the record:
First, there is not now, nor has there ever been, an ongoing, functioning direct democracy. It’s called a mobocracy or plebiscite democracy and it plain doesn’t work: too easily coerced by demagogues, too easily corrupted by oceans of money (hmmm… that sounds familiar). Even our cherished Athenian democracy wasn’t pure rule of the demos. Eligible voters were restricted to free men who had done their military service to the state. That is: no women, no slaves, no one who was not a veteran, no one who owed money and no one who had property close to the city walls (this last rule was because a contemporary tactic of invaders was to burn the grounds close to the city walls to prevent the inhabitants from reaping the grain and fodder). They forced out the corrupt kings and substituted a set of aristocrats and oligarchs called the Archons. The Archons of course were subject to the same kind of corruption as the kings and this was one of the main reasons why the Athenian democracy was eventually defeated by the outright militarist/fascist Spartans. Even in Solon’s Athens there were great restrictions on democracy but these are minor cavils when placed beside his staggering, revolutionary idea of people ruling themselves. We’ve still not gotten over it.


At best, these days, we have the Parliamentarian system (exemplified by the UK) and the Constitutional Republic system (exemplified by the US). These are both powerful bars to the progress of corruption and decay, if used properly. But their flaws are transparently obvious to everyone - how do we deal with the real problem: the will to power.


Democracy and Socialism, in the context of their stated aims, are very, very close, in power distribution terms. Each claims to want the best possible result for the greatest number of its citizens. Where they diverge is that Socialism avers that it is necessary to control the means of distribution in order to effect a just and fair dispersal. Democracy, being only a political system, has no comment on this issue – it punts.


This is a signal difference and we’ll return to it later on…


Next, there’s fascism:

Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.

This is the most troubling definition for me, mostly because there is so little agreement on what, exactly, fascism is. The definition, above, from Wikipedia is a little incoherent but none of the other definitions I could easily find were any more clear. The best description I remember is that fascism is political system where, the state, under the guidance of a dictator, directs and controls civil and business entities for the benefit of the state. I’m not sure that’s any better but it puts the focus on the dictator, where it belongs.


Everyone knows the shibboleths about this: Mussolini, Hitler, Franco; their mad world conquest fantasies, their horrible xenophobias and persecutions, their genocidal psychopathy. These monsters are only matched in ferocity and depravity by their communist alter egos: Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Actually, the lines kinda get blurred here: it’s difficult to parse the difference between Hitler murdering 6 million jews (and assorted catholics, homosexuals and gypsys) and Pol Pot murdering 2 million Cambodians (about a fifth of all Cambodians), not to speak of Stalin’s murdering of upwards of 30 million Russians or Mao’s staggering murder toll of over 100 million Chinese. Who cares what political name you call them? This leads directly to my larger point later on…


But the direct point here is: fascism is largely dependent on a cult of personality surrounding the dictator. His personality cult (this is pretty much a male party, unless you count Maggie Thatcher as a fascist dictator… hmmm… no… but it was close) drives the entire enterprise, egged on, of course by various (truly evil) businesses and organizations - See the history of Krupp, AG in the 1930s and read “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet.


…and corporatism: here’s where it starts to get fun:

Corporatism is a system of economic, political, or social organization that views a community as a body based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals. Formal corporatist models are based upon the contract of corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, scientific, or religious affiliations, into a collective body.

A “system of economic, political, or social organization”, that’s quite grand, isn’t it? And “based upon organic social solidarity and functional distinction and roles amongst individuals” seems a bit thick, doesn’t it? – almost like the writer didn’t really want you to understand what he’s talking about. The rest of Wikipedia’s definition reads like a classic case of double speak – Orwell would have been proud. Here’s the skinny on corporatism: where fascism has the state at the top of the heap running the corporations as satraps, corporatism has the corporations on top, using the state as the enforcement arm for corporate policy. …and you thought it was just corrupt Washington politicians going every man for himself. Turns out it’s not a chaotic mess at all, someone’s deliberately managing this, can you say: "great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money," (H/T to Matt Taibbi). Goldman Sachs doesn’t get all the blame, mainly because there are so many, many others eagerly scrimmaging for a place at the groaning board.

Last, as it should be, is capitalism:

Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production are privately owned and operated for a private profit.

“Capitalism is an economic system” that says it right there. Not a political system nor a social system nor a political ideology, not even a financial system, it doesn’t know or care about countries or constitutions, sees no difference between Senators and gangsters, lawyers and prostitutes, cops and robbers – it’s just an economic system. Capitalism has no business meddling in politics or social systems: it doesn’t know anything about them and it doesn’t care anything about them. The fact that we’ve let fanatical ideologues who neither know nor care anything about our society and political system, manipulate, pervert and control our country in the name of capitalism (AKA ‘free trade”) is a testament to our stupidity and cowardice not their acuity and/or amorality. They never said they had any moral standards and walked the walk; we said we did, and have utterly failed to follow through.


The middle distance point here is that when people make the accusation that Obama is a socialist, they are wrong - by definition. If, for example, Obama had expanded Medicare to Part E (”E” for everyone), then you could legitimately make the charge that he is a socialist. Obama does not do that, he never has, If you look at his record (thin though it is) you will see that, at every opportunity, Obama always, always, comes down on the side of corporations against citizens, large corporations against small ones, corporations against country. Obama is not a socialist - he is a corporatist… no, I won’t say the ‘f’ word, they’d burn me in effigy but given his all-consuming self-absorption it’s not very hard to see him as a dictator (it certainly isn’t very hard for him to see himself that way – in fact I think he already does).


That finishes Part 1 of this exercise. Part 2 will see a dissection of the real world structure of the ‘isms’ and ‘acys’ we defined above. We’ll take a look at how the real world intersects with our pigeonholes and presumptions and how the language we use defines what we see and changes who we are.

The World Boole Made

George Boole (1815-1864) is, in large part, responsible for our current technological society. His studies and discoveries in mathematics and logic were the necessary precursors for the development of computers. Boolean logic is fundamental to computer science and can reasonably be inferred to represent our capacity, as humans, to think rationally, to make evaluative judgments and to choose logically.

Here follows an extremely simplified description of Boolean logic. If you remember this stuff, more power to you, if you’re rusty, this may help warm up your high school math muscles.
Boolean logic deals with logical operations on two items or values (A and B, for example). There are, basically, six types of operations you can do: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT and XOR. The Venn diagrams help to illustrate the operations.

The AND operation – This set is both A and B
I take cream (A) and sugar (B) in my coffee.


The OR operation – This set is either A or B
I take either cream or sugar in my coffee.


The NAND operation – This set is both not A and not B
I do not take cream and do not take sugar in my coffee.


The NOR operation – This set is neither A and B, nor not A and not B
I take neither cream nor sugar in my coffee. (but I might take sweetener and/or soy)


XOR operation – This set is the exclusive difference of A and B
I’ll have either cream or sugar in my coffee, but not both


NOT is self explanatory, I think, and not really relevant to this discussion. As you can see, it is implied in the XOR set.

If you know this stuff does it mean you’re ‘smart’?


Well I’m not really sure what ‘smart’ is and Boolean logic isn’t really that arcane - you use it every day: all the search engines use Boolean algorithms to build their queries. In fact, if you come to really understand Boolean logic you can make your favorite search engine sit up, bark and roll over.

But that’s not the reason I brought it up. Being a technologist, I tend to look for solutions to my puzzles using the tools I’m familiar with. So I was thinking about why it is that people seem to get caught up with (to me) transparent frauds like Reagan and Bush and Obama. There doesn’t seem to be any logic to it and in the end most people just throw up their hands and say “It’s a mystery”.

Well, maybe not so mysterious after all… Several studies have been done in Europe, on the internal effects of religious types of experiences on the brain. The results show that, for some people in the presence of charismatic figures, certain areas of the brain (the pre-frontal cortex) apparently shut down – not surprisingly, these areas are the ones concerned with differentiation and logical constructs. To see abstracts of their findings, go: here and here.

Another part of my nascent theory involves intelligence. Now there’s a word that’s guaranteed to cause trouble. What is it? What’s it good for? Why do we have it and other animals don’t? Why do some of us have it and others don’t?

Intelligence is far too simple a word for all the uses we put it to. Usually it refers to the kind of intellectual activity that shows up well on so-called ‘intelligence tests’. Those who score well add a little swagger to their walk (if they’re complete idiots) those who don’t may be resentful, but I’ve come to believe that there are many kinds of intelligence, going all the way from the Stephen Hawking variety to my cat who treats me fondly even though I’m just a slow, clumsy giant who can’t smell worth a damn and is virtually blind at night.

In the real world, over the past forty years, we’ve seen a succession of charismatic idiots come onto the political scene, one after the other. Each one tries to outdo his predecessor in how much more he can screw up this country. Yes, I’m talking about Reagan, BushII and Obama. I don’t leave out Bill Clinton because I was a Democrat (he did a number of things I was furious about) but because the actions he took on his own generally worked for the betterment of the country while the actions he took under Republican pressure invariably worked against us. How did these mental and moral midgets get elected?

I think there has been a combination of planning and serendipity working for the enslavers. There is now no doubt that key elements of this ongoing train wreck were well thought through and detailed plans were made to be implemented whenever conditions were right. Others have written and spoken about this at length: Naomi Klein, James Galbraith, Simon Johnson, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader, just to name a few. The elitist movement called ‘globalization’ has been revealed as a horrific scheme to plunder the entire planet and recast the population as indentured servants to their own destruction – unions destroyed, national governments suborned and reduced to penury, impossible ’restructuring’ plans designed to subjugate entire populations to corporatist rule while shifting the blame to the very governments that should be protecting their populace.

In current events, Chris Hedges has a revealing piece on the moral cesspool of the “Ubermensch” mentality that permeates our culture. here. James Galbraith recently made this statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in reference to the serial pillaging of the American economy by ‘free’ market fanatics over the past thirty years. Yesterday, Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP, incredibly, said “The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” Even as it becomes clear that BP lied about the size of the spill: apparently not 2,000 bbl/day as originally stated or even 5,000 bbl/day as they revised upward. More like 25,000 bbl/day, possibly as much as 50,000 bbl/day… and the beat goes on...

How do we deal with these horrors? How can we protect ourselves against these predators? Is there a kind of intelligence that would enable us to navigate in the dystopian world of corporate political savagery? What kind of intelligence would that be? And: can we test for it?
The answer, thanks to Danish researchers and Boolean logic, is: maybe.

There may be a combination of brain dysfunction and an inherent inability to deal with cognition that beguiles and then enslaves what might otherwise be a perfectly normal human. The proclivity to unskeptical belief doesn’t seem to have much to do with any measures of intelligence. I had a dismaying experience, in 2008, of weekly meetings with a team of lawyers, all very accomplished and experienced, people you would normally expect to have a jaundiced view of the world and a fairly cynical opinion of politicians. Yet several of this hard-bitten crew just couldn’t stop gushing about how wonderful Obama was and when presented with evidence of outright lies and fraudulent political actions, they only grew more vociferous in their praise and more hostile to any criticism. My anecdotal evidence echoes the Danish results.
So, here it is: I think we need to abandon our long cherished belief that everyone should have the right to vote. Not everyone is qualified to make decisions about our republic, not everyone should vote.Voting should be an earned privilege, not a right.

We’ve had all kinds of suggestions over the centuries on whether and how to limit enfranchisement. Some of our intellectual powerhouses of the past had long and vigorous discussions about it. Jefferson didn’t want to make the vote available to just anyone, he thought that only landowners were responsible enough to be entrusted with voting – he also thought they were, in general, smarter than the normal run of folks and more likely to have thoughts and values similar to his own. Voting rights were one of the main subjects of the suffrage movement for women in the 1800’s and the civil rights movement of the 1960’s. In fact, it’s become anathema to even speak of limiting voting rights. It’s one of those things we don’t want to talk about these days - there seem to be a lot of those kinds of ‘verboten’ subjects.

I think we need to talk about this one. We’ve gotten to the point where we can see the edge of the cliff for this culture: running out of resources, out of control greed, complete co-option of governance by money, the bottom dropping out of any concept of responsibility to one another. How can we put a stop to this slide?
It’ll take many ways and many actions over a maddeningly long timeframe, of course, but one of the things we can do is to start re-thinking our a prioris.

A lot of times these discussions only go over well-trodden ground. Everyone knows the arguments on both sides and, inevitably, we all just circle round and round until we’re exhausted and just drop the discussion. Every once in a while, however, there’s an opening.

The problem with limiting enfranchisement is twofold: why do you want to do it? And how do you do it in a way that everyone can recognize is fair?

Those of us who are ‘of a certain age’ can all recall (mostly apocryphal) stories about blacks being denied the right to vote on various absurd pretexts. Clearly these limits were put on by the Jim Crow south to prevent them from voting because they were black. All of the variants to limiting enfranchisement were vulnerable to the charge that they were just as absurd and were only mask for the intent to prevent the vote for blacks or women or Catholics or Jews or… pick your target. Even intelligence tests are vulnerable to the charge of ‘racial cultural imbalance’.

So what can we do if we’d really like to weed out the ‘sheeple’? And I would like to weed them out, for several reasons: First, they’re way too easy to fool, propagandists like Karl Rove and David Axelrod are detestable human beings but they are very, very smart and they have developed the use of their tools to a razor sharp edge. Their capability to determine election results with defamation, deception and outright lies, is deadly both in its accuracy and in its results. Second, I’m tired of my life being run by ‘sheeple’ (I’m being polite here, I usually call them something else), I imagine many of us are. It’s time to reset the rules.

Now there can be a lot of discussion about the rights of citizens who are denied the vote: why and who decides, is there recourse or remedy? How does this affect their other rights? What’s the relationship to the original tea partiers (“No taxation without representation”).
This is absolutely a discussion we should have, just not here and now – mostly because it’s huge and needs a bigger venue that one article in a blog.
And there can be a whole ‘nother discussion about other kinds of criteria for getting a voting card. How this would redefine our society: do we then have a two-tiered citizenry? What are the rights and obligations of those who fail to get their voting cards? Should they get a break on taxes? What if they’re in the armed forces? Would this lead to another kind of social stratification and discrimination (in the old classist/racist sense)? This also absolutely merits a thorough discussion but not here and now for the reason cited above.
Here I’m want to focus on how and why we can and should devise and use a test that determines your (or my) ability to think clearly and evaluate choices on the basis of reason, logic, horse sense, common sense… whatever you want to call it: just as long as you don’t use “the Force”.

In Boolean terms, everyone does AND and OR, a fewer number are comfortable with the concepts of NAD and NOR but the ones I want to screen for are the ones who ‘get’ XOR. These are the people I want for voters in this society. Everyone else should ‘live long and prosper’ but the XOR people should be setting the rules.

“Well, CDP”, you may say, “Isn’t this just another way of reserving the vote for smart people? Aren’t you just being an elitist?” My answer is that I think it would be great if we reserved the vote for smart people (the alternative seems counterproductive) but the last election shows us that ‘smart’ doesn’t necessarily mean smart. Look at the legions of dunces with degrees who voted for Obama – high IQ numbers and a bunch of letters after your name doesn’t guarantee you can think your way out of a paper bag.

What’s interesting about the XOR test is that it doesn’t purport to measure your potential or put a stamp on your putative relative value. It also doesn’t care whether you’re a liberal, a conservative, a stock broker or a Scientologist. It only tests whether you have discernment, the ability to evaluate the evidence and make a judgment: take this but not that.

The context of the XOR test is important too. We’re talking about politics so we should expect the test to measure deliberative capability in choices made in the political context: think of it as measuring your bullshit detector. And when you think about it: do you really want to share your right to vote with someone who obviously can’t tell a bald-faced lie when they hear one? (I won’t even bother to provide examples, I’m sure you all have plenty)

There is another way of presenting Boolean logic called the “Truth Table” (seriously, I didn’t make this up). Below is the truth table for XOR.


You can see here that p XOR q is only true when one, and only one, of the values is true. This is the kind of thought we should encourage, for example: listening to a candidate’s words and comparing them with past performance. For example: candidate Obama’s ringing words about the need for health care reform, contrasted with his actual record of derailing health care in Illinois. This might have been a clue that he was in the pocket of the insurance companies (he got a letter of praise from the insurance companies for his work in Illinois). Regarding political ads for what they are: propaganda (and therefore almost certainly untrue).

So, what would an XOR Voter Test look like? Well there are some models for a starting point: Situational Judgment Tests (SJT) have been used by many organizations, including the US Army, for decades. Employers often have their HR departments administer this kind of test to determine where prospective employees will best fit in the organization.

These kinds of tests are usually written for the specific situation and I would expect exactly that kind of thought and attention to be applied to a Voter Test. The Voter Test would come in the mail with your primary registration for every election (you get another chance to pass, or fail, at every election). It need not be long, perhaps a dozen questions, all designed to determine that the prospective voter is engaged in the process and has the capability of making a decision based on reason – whether they actually do make a reasoned judgment is another matter. We can’t control anyone’s actual behavior (nor should we want to) but we can do two things: first, make sure that our fellow voters are competent to make a decision and second, weed out the propaganda, i.e., political ads, political money, etc. Dealing with the second problem is another matter for a different discussion, right now, I’m thinking about the first problem.

Let me try to anticipate some objections.

Isn’t this just a disguised ‘intelligence’ test?

No, this type of test doesn’t measure your IQ or aptitude (like an SAT) or your knowledge competency (like a GRE, MCAT or LSAT). It measures your ability to judge a situation (or a candidate) using objective criteria rather than emotional attraction (or repulsion).

This is discrimination and besides, it’s unconstitutional.

Last charge answered first: it’s not unconstitutional. The Constitution only says “race, color, or previous condition of servitude” can’t prevent you from voting (Amendment 15), nor can gender: “on account of sex” (Amendment 19), or unpaid taxes: “by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax” (Amendment 24), or if you are 18 “on account of age” (Amendment 26).

On to ‘discrimination’. This is another loaded word, when people use it they generally intend it to be a euphemism for ‘racist’, but what the word really means is “to note or distinguish as different”.

[Sidebar here: be careful with dictionaries, Webster’s Third International, for example, defines words by their ‘common usage’. When in doubt, go to the OED for the actual meaning]

So, in fact, we do want people to discriminate, to measure, to compare, to test, to doubt, to evaluate. And we really don’t want anyone who can’t do those things to vote. There are a whole lot of people out there voting who aren’t interested in making their vote meaningful – they’re voting a party ticket, or voting for someone who has seniority or voting for the ‘kewl’ guy. Every one of those drone votes, every one of those thoughtless voters, damages you and damages me. They vitiate our ability to change the status quo, they dilute our power.

I want you to be very careful with your vote because your vote affects me – and mine affects you. This is one of the last things we all do together as a community and the oligarchs are doing everything in their power to make it superfluous. The barrages of political advertising that are nothing but lies. The incessant blaring of media hype of the chosen candidate, the absence of coverage of anyone else (or worse, the vitriolic savaging we saw in the Spring of 2008) and the utter vacuum of attention paid to anything that smells like real discussion or thought about actual issues.

They really don’t want you to vote, your apathy is a surrender to their onslaught. And if they can’t prevent you from voting, they want you to go for the cardboard cutout of the moment: the amiable old idiot, the stumbletongued cretin ‘who’d be great to have a beer with’ or the pretty, vacuous HopenChange clown, they don’t care about color or party, ideology or aspiration; if they can keep the electorate stupid and apathetic there’s plenty of money to spare for ensuring that the ‘vote’ goes their way.

Restricting the electorate to those who prove they can think would go a long way to preventing the continuing abuse we see all around and would also be a step towards repairing the damage already caused.

The Honor Roll

Here's the list of Democratic Representatives who had the courage to vote against this atrocious Health'care' bill:
































Every other Democrat should be voted out of office this November.

Smoke signals...

"Where there's smoke, there's fire." is a cliche but it's true nonetheless... I'm smelling smoke - haven't seen it yet but it's out there.

Charleston International Longshore Association Local 1422 leader Ken Riley:

"You can say “Don’t buy Wal-Mart” all you want, preach it till the cows come home; Wal-Mart’s gonna be boomin’. I can’t say to my neighbor, “Man, don’t shop at Wal-Mart.” He’ll say, “Well, that’s easy for you, Kenny; how much money do you make an hour? I’m only making $7.25.” So how you gonna tell all these poor people, “Don’t shop at Wal-Mart?” You want to get Wal-Mart’s attention? Stop the goods.

We have to get bold. We’re dying, and when you’re dying you explore radical medication because you’ve got noother choice. Maybe the medication will kill you, but the disease will definitely kill you. You have to get to the point where Martin Luther King was on that final night, when he said, “Like any man I would like to live a long life, but it really don’t matter to me now.” He had a vision. We are going to die anyway, so it really don’t matter; we have got to fight now. "

From "When You're Dying You Explore Radical Medication"

By JoAnn Wypijewski http://www.counterpunch.org/

Sounds like Harry Bridges and the IWW, doesn't it?

...smells like wood burning...

Norman Solomon writes in "Zero Public Option + One Mandate = Disaster"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18

"On a political level, the mandate provision is a massive gift to the Republican Party, all set to keep on giving to the right wing for many years. With a highly intrusive requirement that personal funds and government subsidies be paid to private corporations, the law would further empower right-wing populists who want to pose as foes of government "elites" bent on enriching Wall Street.

With this turn of the "healthcare reform" screw, the Democratic Party will be cast -- with strong evidence -- as a powerful tool of corporate America. But the Democrats on Capitol Hill and the organizations eagerly whipping for passage are determined to celebrate the enactment of something called "healthcare reform."

...throw another log on the fire...

The brilliant Chris Cooper writes in "Everybody Knows The Deal Is Rotten"

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-4

"It is not the job of Dennis Kucinich to prop up this disappointing president or the rotten, useless Democratic party. It is not the job of progressive voters to support lame candidates who lie to them and use them because "the other party is worse." It is not the job of the American public to "make a space for the president", to support "incremental improvements" in our wretched situation or to "force the president" to use his alleged giant brain and forceful oratory in pursuit of real and useful and meaningful governance by sending him letters or contributions or by "supporting him" just because he's not George Bush or John McCain.

This country is falling apart. People are dying. Despair is settled upon the land. These clowns are frigging around for no purpose better than the enrichment of Wall Street bankers and Connecticut insurance tycoons.

There has been no change. There is no hope."

...that's definitely smoke...

I'm still working on Part 4 of "Reflections..." which is starting to look like it wants to be a lot bigger and have a different form. But it's beginning to look like the springtime of our discontent around the web.

We're re-playing "Network" (1976)

Max Schumacher's parting rant:

"It's too late, Diana. There's nothing left in you that I can live with. You're one of Howard's humanoids. If I stay with you, I'll be destroyed. Like Howard Beale was destroyed. Like Laureen Hobbs was destroyed. Like everything you and the institution of television touch is destroyed. You're television incarnate, Diana: Indifferent to suffering; insensitive to joy. All of life is reduced to the common rubble of banality. War, murder, death are all the same to you as bottles of beer. And the daily business of life is a corrupt comedy. You even shatter the sensations of time and space into split seconds and instant replays. You're madness, Diana. Virulent madness. And everything you touch dies with you. But not me. Not as long as I can feel pleasure, and pain... and love."

Damn! I miss Paddy Chayevsky... I'm feeling that way about our political 'system'.

Many things that have been dormant through the winter begin to wake in the spring. It may be a rough time but if the rising tide of anger I'm sensing grows...

Stephen Hawking said "In the vicinity of a Black Hole, anything can happen." I think we're close to a Black Hole in politics right now.

...wait, besides the smoke, is that brimstone?

Once again the US ahows its leadership on human rights...

...oh, wait

India Wants to Give Women 1 / 3 of Legislative Seats

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: March 9, 2010

Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET

NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Tuesday for a historic bill that would reserve one-third of legislative seats for women, despite a boycott by socialist lawmakers.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the 186-1 vote a ''historic step forward toward emancipation of Indian womanhood.'' The bill now goes to the lower house, where it is likely to pass.

Members greeted the announcement of the voting result by thumping their desks.

The vote came after socialist lawmakers blocked the parliamentary debate on Monday and forced the upper house to adjourn twice on Tuesday. The protesters later boycotted the voting.

The bill to reserve one-third of legislative seats for women -- in national and state parliaments -- has faced strong opposition since it was first proposed more than a decade ago, with many political leaders worried that their male-dominated parties would lose seats.

But socialist lawmakers' objection is that the bill does not go far enough: They would like to see seats reserved for ethnic minorities and people from low castes.

The Bahujan Samaj Party lawmakers, who mainly represent lower castes, participated in the debate but abstained from voting. They were protesting the government's rejection of their demand to reserve seats for women belonging to their community within the government proposal.

On Monday, angry legislators in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament, rushed to the chairman's seat as he presided over the session, tore up copies of the bill and tried to grab his microphone.

The bill is expected to be taken up the powerful lower house of parliament for voting next week. It will have to be approved by 15 of India's 28 states before it becomes law.

It is expected to pass since the main opposition parties, including right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and communist groups, already have announced their support for the legislation proposed by the ruling Congress Party.

Arun Jaitley, a top leader of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, said even 63 years after India's independence from British colonialists, women had only 10 percent representation in the powerful lower house of parliament. They make up nearly 50 percent of India's more than 1 billion people.

The proposal is an attempt to correct some of the historical gender disparities in India, where women receive less education than men and are weighed down by illiteracy, poverty and low social status.

The bill would raise the number of female lawmakers in the 545-seat lower house to 181 from the current 59. It would nearly quadruple the number of women in the 250-seat upper house.

What the hell is going on in this country? Why isn't this long settled law? How f***ing far backwards do we have to go before we wake up?

Whoops! I forgot... we're here:

...nevermind.

Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 3

Obama is not the problem – we are.

I’ve been re-reading the “Anti-Federalist Papers” trying to get a feel for what the FFs were thinking as they gathered in the spring and summer of 1787 to hammer out a constitution. One pleasant surprise is that James Madison, acting as scribe and reporter of the various players, was possessed of a very trenchant wit. His sly observations on the speakers and their opining liven up what might easily have been a lugubrious exercise.

Three things come across, very clearly:

These were men who had thought long and hard about the issues being raised. Many of them warned against exactly the condition of corruption of the body politic we find ourselves in today.
They were men in and of their time. That is, they were aware of history and were glad to take example or make example of historical solutions to the problems besetting them.
By the same token, they were not able to see themselves clearly, in situ, nor were they aware of what was to come. (Rumsfeld’s “unknown unknowns”)

..and fourth, Jefferson was in Paris. A tragedy in my opinion, we would never have had to make the first ten amendments had he been present, for one thing, and I can’t help but think that the Constitution would be a much better document than it already is.
Two things should be taken into account when thinking about this time, these men and the work they wrought.

First, the context of the time. That context comes in several flavors depending on what we’re looking at.

Politics: the French Revolution hadn’t happened yet. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were still blithely coasting along with le Ancien Regime, unaware of the gathering storm. Marat, Danton and Robespierre were just dots on the political horizon, Napoleon was undreamt of.

Economics: The Industrial Revolution in England was just picking up steam [heh, heh!] and the textile mills were beginning Great Britain’s voracious appetite for raw materials which would lead them to found the greatest empire ever known (southern American cotton fields were part of the mix that fueled the American Civil War in the next century).

Legal: American jurisprudence was still based, in large part, on English Common Law. This ancestry was the story of a seesaw class battle (in Marxist terms) between the peasants (now the proletariat) and the Upper classes (in the person of the King). Nowhere in this mix was any consideration of, or thought given to, the corporation.

All of which leads us to my next point:

It was not possible for the framers, given their milieu, to comprehend, much less anticipate, the mind-numbing reach and power that would be amassed by deathless, faceless, amoral, avaricious, irresponsible corporations.

Neither could they have anticipated the nigh-logarithmic advances in science and technology that have occurred over the last 221 years. James Watt had received a patent on his steam engine only 8 years earlier, Morse’s telegraph (the first global internet) was 50 years in the future.
The point is that we have gone into legal/political/moral territory that constitute another dimension insofar as an 18th century viewpoint is concerned, enlightened as they may have been. We may not be their equals but I think we’re at a point where we have no choice but to try.

We need to take this system apart and glue it back together again, with a few improvements. Until recently I thought that a third party (and a 4th and a 5th party) would be enough to upset the duopoly that now exists but the corruption has spread too far and too deep. With the system as it now stands no individual can remain uncorrupted, no new party can be effective against the power now entrenched. Good luck to the Tea Party, btw, I’d love to be proved wrong on this.

What we need now is a reset - a full stop, down tools, wildcat strike, to hell with the bosses and the union reps too kinda reset. The US has run for 221 years on a pretty good set of rules but times change and so does circumstance. The visionaries who created the US Constitution were, frankly, a lot smarter and wiser than anyone I see around today but even they couldn’t anticipate the kinds of changes that have taken place in the intervening two centuries. We face a lot of the same threats they faced then but we also face some they could not have dreamt of. Corporate structures vaster and more powerful than nation-states: accountable to no one. Weapons that threaten life over the entire planet. Forget the weapons: deliberate actions by individuals and groups that threaten life over the entire planet. Crazed religious fanatics, within and without, who would kill every last person on earth who refuses to accept their creed… hmmm, well I guess they were familiar with that one.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

There is a well-trodden path for the kind of political train wreck we’re experiencing: a nation-state with a claim to some kind of democracy representing all or most citizens begins to experience broad-based stress. This can take the form of attack from without by other nation-states, economic difficulties deriving from any of a number of circumstances, internal strife created by opposing ideologies, deliberate sabotage by interested parties, general or specific corruption of internal control agencies by bribery or blackmail. Usually it is a combination of several or all of these ills that eventually breaks the system down. Inevitably, as frustration levels skyrocket, violence breaks out – which is what the saboteurs have been waiting for: some sort of insurrection begins to form and whoever is in control of the military moves in and declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Alternately, there is a civil war and the victor declares martial law, massacres their enemies, sets up a tinpot dictatorship and goes merrily along their way. Or there is a general breakdown of society from, say, a biological attack and the nearest military force declares marital law… well, you get the idea.

Think of it, aside from the American revolution, just about every political revolution in the last 200 years has worked out this way: the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution (the second one), several of the so-called ‘communist’ revolutions – they all devolved into savage dictatorships unrecognizable even by their most devoted followers. There’s no compelling reason why we won’t head in that direction as well.

How do we avoid this trap of history?

We need to start seriously thinking about convening a constitutional convention.

Article V of the US Constitution:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” [my emphasis]

I know that ‘constitutional conventions’ (CC) sounds almost funny, like we should dress up in periwigs and frock coats, but it’s a legitimate process that we have the right to use. There are, however, some very serious questions to be asked first:

Why propose this path?

Because it’s the only thing left that will forestall the slide into insurrection/dictatorship.

Can we do it?

Maybe, the first option provided by Article V is closed to us, I don’t see any way that Congress would agree to opening a Constitutional Convention when it’s obvious that we mean to deprive them of their money and their power. On the other hand, once you convene an Article V CC, all bets are off. I notice that there several proposals in Congress purporting to deal with the ‘Dred Roberts’ decision – all of them strictly adhering to that single issue. I think they’re (justly) terrified of what would happen if the ‘people’ ever got their hands on this process.

How would we do it?

Go through the state legislatures, there may still be enough uncorrupted folks at that level to see the value and necessity of a CC. Try to do it as a simultaneous effort in all the states so as to vitiate the tons of money that will be thrown against the idea.

How do we keep out the wingnuts – from both wings?

We can’t, they’ll be there in force and will try to co-opt the process for their own ends. This means ‘we’ must be organized to prevent this kind of takeover, especially from the corporate fascists, this is just the kind of opportunity they think they can take advantage of.

How do we keep out the money?

Ah, there’s the rub: the transnats will see this as an opportunity to twist the laws to their own ends and will release a tsunami of money in order to do so.

What’s the real danger here?

Once you open up a CC, it can pretty much do whatever it wants. We could end up with President-for-Life Obama – for real, or a true corporatist/fascist state like the Randites and other nutjobs want. If it gets too wacko some MacArthur wannabe could declare martial law…[see above]. We might actually start the civil war we’re trying to prevent.

So, this could be dangerous, couldn’t it?


Yup. But I think it’s become abundantly clear that we’re going to have to take some kind of risk. If we stick our heads in the sand now, it’s quite likely that we’ll end up with a true corporate/fascist state run by Hank Paulson, Bernie Ebbers, Jeffery Skilling or one of their clones.

What do we want out of a CC?

We want to update the Constitution to deal with 21st century problems.

Howinhell do we do that?

See Part 4

Reflections in a Dark Room – Part 2

Note: I wrote this before the SOTU and waited to see if I needed to change anything - I didn't

Obama is not the problem – we are.

OK, what does that mean? It means that Obama is just a symptom of whatever the disease is. It means that he was obvious, even elementary, and why did we - as in 'the electorate' fall for it? It means that we have to start looking in the mirror and really seeing what's there... I came across this review of a critically acclaimed TV show and I think it sheds some light:

“Maybe we deserve it for watching in the first place. Or maybe this is the price those of us who can't chuckle at absolutely everything under the sun will be forced to pay, over and over again in this spectacle-driven nightmare culture, for still having some shred of humanity deep inside us.” -Heather Havrilesky writing about the “Dexter” finale in Salon

“spectacle-driven nightmare culture” is an accurate description, I think, an old friend calls it “modern bread and circuses”. I keep thinking of Sturgeon’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.”

“Buy Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, Rinso Blue, buy Rinso Blue…” [and so on for the full 30 second TV spot]... and watch Rinso Blue sales skyrocket while all the smugly oblivious tell each other that they’re not affected by those TV ads – hmmm, I wonder if it would work in politics…
Another vapid, content-free cinema extravaganza by James Cameron goes over the $1 billion mark in sales – in two weeks - guaranteeing yet another decade of valueless drivel from Hollywood, all with happy endings (the focus groups say it adds at least $50 million to the bottom line).

Meanwhile...

The ranks of the homeless swell, the poor remain unfed, the ill remain untreated, the unemployed are reduced to begging and yet our several wars go merrily on their way: one useless quagmire, propping up a staggeringly corrupt kleptocracy is winding down just as another is ramping up and of course, after we’ve poured out blood and treasure in an doomed attempt to create a nation-state out of a tribal culture by force majeur in Afghanistan, why we’ll have Pakistan just ripe for yet another American Expeditionary Force.

I’d have a lot more faith in us if we stopped thinking that the Marines are the same thing as the Army Corps of Engineers or Medecins sans Frontiers, but I digress…

The unholy confluence of thirty years of gigantic political lies (supply side “economics”), political sabotage (Ken Starr and the persecution of the Clintons as only one example) and sheer, unadulterated political cowardice (“Impeachment is off the table”) combined with the monstrous entrance of advertising techniques (and amorality) into politics (thank you Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Karl Rove, David Axelrod) has all combined to produce a spineless, feckless, deliberately ill- and under-informed, gullible ‘electorate’ who can be led contentedly down the garden path and blatantly lied to with absolute impunity, (see David Axelrod’s recent remarks on the North Carolina primary: “Yeah, we were behind in the polls so we decided to call Clinton a racist and that did it.” – yes, I’m paraphrasing but he admitted it.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

We now live in a vapid culture of overarching ignorance, obsessed with the ‘now’. We blithely ignore the past (see Santayana).

I’m being bludgeoned into incredulity by the superimposed banality of contemporary life. I was reading, the other day, about the Boskops, a race of hominids whose remains were found in South Africa in the early part of the 20th century. This was a race, very closely related to us (about as close as we are to Chimpanzees) but whose brains were about 25-33% larger than ours especially in the cerebellum (where cognitive thinking occurs). These folks would be geniuses in relation to us and would have probably played a major role in the development of civilization. Incidentally, they appear to have had very child-like faces, 1/5th of the head frontal area vs 1/3rd for Homo Sapiens – much like the non-threatening aliens of sci-fi lore. We don’t know what wiped them out: disease, ecological disaster, attacks by Homo Sapiens… I’m thinking evolution really jumped the shark when the Boskops died out because Homo Sap apparently can’t think its way out of a paper bag.

This isn’t just an oldguy rant (that’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it). It’s another attempt to generate a wakeup call to me/we/you/us, before they just cancel elections as irrelevant foregone conclusions, before they kill the internet and free, broadcast TV - that campaign has already started, didja know? Mind you, I wouldn’t be mad about that if they canceled all TV: as an information tool, it’s next to useless; as a propaganda delivery system it’s frighteningly effective.

We just had a primary and an election where massive cheating and illegal campaign tactics by the ‘winning’ candidate (both in delegate counts and in huge duplicitous campaign contributions), race baiting and palpable, outright lies were used to install an obviously incompetent candidate as president. Obama thugs and bully-boys – the same ones were seen in five separate states - threatening and intimidating caucus goers into voting for Obama. Women in the North Carolina primary wept because they wanted Hillary but they were pressured by friends, family and the entire black community into voting for Obama because he is black. The ‘intelligentsia’ of college faculty and ‘lefty intellectuals’ became instant sycophants because he is black and the masses of slackerclones woke momentarily from their fever dreams in mom’s basement (where the parents are the problem), to vote for him because: “he’s cool kewl!”. $200 million flowed into the Obama campaign coffers in the middle of September 2008 (when it looked like he would lose to McCain) does anyone really believe this money came from little Suzie's cookie jar? Really?

We’ve accepted so much that we should have resisted with blood in the streets: “free speech zones” - blocks away from the parade, behind chain link fences topped with concertina razor wire. Congressmen and Senators whose corporate sponsorship should be tattooed on their foreheads, awash in money and privilege telling us that the only thing we can hope for is that your government will now force you to pay a private insurance company for a policy that has no value whatsoever. Regulatory agencies that will “go to the mattresses” to prevent any corporate regulation whatsoever. Corporate propaganda channels masquerading as ‘news’ programs pouring pre-digested pablum down our throats and calling it information.

Obama is not the problem – we are.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it!” you say, so what's your point? What are you/us supposed to do about it?

Stay tuned for Part 3

Reflections in a Dark Room - Part 1

Charles Addams once drew a wonderful cartoon showing a hall with facing mirrors, a man is looking into the mirrors with an astonished look on his face because far, far down the infinite regression of mirrors… someone is peeking back. These days I’m not sure which one I am.

The American Psychiatric Association’s definitive handbook, the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, Text Revision”, best known as the DSM-IV-TR says this:

Individuals with this Cluster B Personality Disorder in their actions regularly disregard and violate the rights of others. These behaviors may be aggressive or destructive and may involve breaking laws or rules, deceit or theft.

Diagnostic criteria for 301.7 Antisocial Personality Disorder

There is a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others occurring since age 15 years, as indicated by three (or more) of the following:

1) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest

(2) deceitfulness, as indicated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure

(3) impulsivity or failure to plan ahead

(4) irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults

(5) reckless disregard for safety of self or others

(6) consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations

(7) lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another

Diagnostic criteria for 301.81 Narcissistic Personality Disorder
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

If you think I mean to apply these attributes to Obama, you’re right. I’ve consistently referred to him as a “narcissistic, sociopathic sock puppet”. Apparently I’m out of fashion amongst the psychologically-correct, it seems he’s a “narcissistic, antisocial sock puppet” nowadays… mine sounds better and I’m going to keep on taking literary license and use it.

I and many others (especially at NoQuarter) have made something of a second career out of lambasting, deriding and skewering Obama about his lack of affect, his self-reverential sermonizing, his cowardly self-glorification, his tendency to treat his ‘friends’ like used condoms once he’s gotten whatever he wanted from them and his baseline con-man mendacity.

Feels good to be right when everyone else was wrong, doesn’t it? It’s nice to see the new respect in your friends’ eyes and hear it in their voices, tacit acknowledgement that they know they were wrong and you were right. It’s good when people come up to you shaking their heads and saying: “Man, you called it!”

Not getting those righteous kudos? those apologies for not listening to you? those accolades to your perceptive good judgment? …yeah, me neither…

In fact a curious phenomenon has shown up. I keep getting into mini-confrontations with people who were committed Obamabots all through last year’s political fracas.
These confrontations frequently take the form of a continuing debate, as though the other person were responding to an accusation or criticism they think I made about Obama. It’s like they’re having an internal debate with ‘me’ and, having scripted ‘my’ lines for me, they are now answering the script. I’m not instigating these rants or encouraging them, they are sui generis but it’s been enlightening and, in a small way, reflects what I see going on in the larger political and cultural world.

All this fall there has been a steady stream of bewildered, shell-shocked media flacks and so-called ‘netroots’ types wandering in out of the wilderness with stricken looks on their faces, trying to reconcile their messiah fantasy with ugly reality.

Some of them (very, very few) now get it – they understand that they were made fools of by a cynical machine politician – yes, I know, that really isn’t ‘getting’ it but it’s as close to reality as they’re ever going to manage.

Some of them are saddened that, in this day and age, even the greatest of men cannot strike the fetters of our bondage to the past - whatever that means.
Some of them ‘see’ that the entrenched opposition is implacable in its determination destroy ‘the work’ and prevent Obama from attaining the goals he spoke of so eloquently for us, do you remember the speech where he… [blah, blah ,blah]

Many times this takes the form of the ‘reverse rant’: they’ll pick a current topic, like Sarah Palin’s book tour, and start off with a spittle-flecked indictment of SP’s stupidity, incompetence, mendacity, etc., etc. and then segue into a sequential cri du Coeur about Obama’s failure to do “X” or “Y” ending with a blame-a-thon that begins with vast conspiracies and usually narrows down to ‘right wingnuts” or ‘redneck racists’ or both, with the subtext that I must be one of them because I thought that Obama was an incompetent sociopath with fascist tendencies back in 2007 and said so.

A lot of them can’t do it, they were so ‘in the tank’ for Obama that they will cast about for anyone, anyone, else to blame, I saw an impromptu panel on ‘Morning Joe’ (Dec.31, 2009) including: Tom Brokaw, Donny Deutsch, Harold Ford, Jr., David Gregory, Arianna Huffington, Norah O'Donnell, Jon Meacham and Tweety. All these worthies came to the sage conclusion that ‘white racism’ was responsible for Obama’s problems.
White racism apparently gave all our money to the banksters, reinvigorated the Afghan war, forced us to create a health-’care’ bill without the ‘care’ part and has been running a bowing and scraping “America Apologizes’ tour all over the globe. ‘White racists’ also, it seems, determined that the terrorist defense network did/did not work, that we will/will not close Gitmo, can/cannot wind down the Afghan war, will/will not limit bankster bonuses. ‘White racists’ demanded that Nebraska be exempt from Medicare payments, that women be exempted from Medicare (or any other ‘-care’) benefits, that LBGT folks are second class citizens after all.

Pretty powerful, these ‘white racists’…excuse me: the ‘bitter people, clinging to their guns and religion’, have to get my euphemisms straight.

The thing is: a year on, Obama is a known quantity. For good or for ill he has defined himself by his actions (and inactions) in his first year in power. No one, now, can claim ignorance or hide from the truth.

The fact that we knew it a long time ago and shouted it from the rooftops doesn’t change the ugly reality that he’s firmly in power now. Which brings us face to face with the larger question: what’s the problem?

The answer is: Obama is not the problem – we are.

More in Part 2