Thursday, December 22, 2011

“Inter arma enim silent leges.”

“In Time of War the Law is Made Silent.” – Cicero

The infamous, illegal, immoral and shameful American war of choice in Iraq has ended, as it should, in ignominy. The few remaining American troops took the flag and slunk over the border to Kuwait, home of another American war that, at least, had the virtues of being morally right and being legal (insofar as any war can ever be called ‘legal’).

Almost 5,000 American lives were lost in vain, more than a million Iraqis died also, it looks like, in vain. Just a few days in and the Iraqi republic is falling apart like a sand castle in the waves.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

We shattered our army, paupered our economy, destroyed our reputation and drowned our morality in Fallujah, at Abu Graib and with the imperial satrapy of Mr. Bremer in the Green Zone…. and all of it in the Name of Oil.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

At home we threw Habeus Corpus out the window along with Posse Comitatus. We created the Department of Homeland Security: the largest and most comprehensive secret police service since the Stasi. We allowed torture and secret prisons, ‘rendering’ and ‘extreme interrogation’ we regularly submit to x-ray machines and full body searches for internal and external traffic, we’ve created another branch of surveillance and control, the TSA, with almost unlimited powers of control and no accountability. We no longer even require the rubber stamp of security courts post hoc for eavesdropping and now countenance ever more surveillance by any agency for any reason they care to offer, or not.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Our local police departments have been transformed over the last ten years into militarized heavily armed crowd control shock troops, rent-a-cop security forces casually pepper spray seated protesters – prophylactically. The riffraff are herded into ‘free-speech zones’ where they can howl their fury against the chain-link fences that conjure images of every dictatorship we’ve ever encountered… they may even be able to glimpse the motorcade as it glides serenely by, several blocks away.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

For 500 years the Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean world and for 500 years before that, the Roman Republic fascinated and terrified an ever expanding sphere of influence. What made the Romans so powerful? What made their power so long lasting? What made them fail at the end and fade into history?

Volumes, entire libraries have been written about the Roman Empire. Extensive studies, archeological evidence, contemporary testaments abound and certain themes emerge.

Development of the Roman Model

  • Development of a permanent, professional standing army – the legions’ training and tactics were far ahead of adversaries (with some notable exceptions).
  • Development of a network of hard infrastructure – the famous Roman roads and aqueducts
  • Development of the Rule of Law – Roman jurisprudence was evenly and widely applied

Distribution of Power

  • Distribution of Power - A militant Republic develops elite classes

o The orders of Roman Knights

o The concentration of money and power

o The ascendance of familial/tribal networks

· Distribution of Power – The Republic becomes The Imperium

o The path to power is through the military

o The means to secure power is through the granary (Egypt)

o The means to preserve power is through Bread and Circuses

Dissolution of Empire

  • As the power concentrates, the Rule of Law begins to break down
  • As the money concentrates, the social contract dissipates
  • The Center Cannot Hold, the Empire melts away

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Even in the drastically abbreviated ‘Rise and Fall’ above it is easy to see parallels to our contemporary situation, or to any empire for that matter. The difference is that, now, we know that we know (‘known knowns’ in Rumsfeldian). We need not follow Santayana’s dictum to destruction.

But we’re in a permanent state of war now: War on Afghanistan, War on Pakistan, War on Terror, War on Drugs…

The total cost, so far, for wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is at least $3.2-3.4 trillion. (1)

The river of blood flows on, the river of treasure bleeds on, the river of the spirit continues to hemorrhage.

Never has Yeats been more apropos:

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

–William Butler Yeats

The dead cry out for meaning, the living cleve to rotting gods, the worst dance on the grave of our morality.

Stop our several wars, stop our home-grown Monsters of the Id, restore the Rule of Law before it really is, too late. All war is a crime and the first casualties are truth and the Rule of Law.

Inter arma enim silent leges.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Reboot: America 2.0

It doesn’t help to be right if you can’t make things change. Cassandra was terminally frustrated – I know how she felt. It also doesn’t help to sit in the warm bath of your own self-regard and point fingers at all the bad guys – they’re merrily running off with the silverware and they aren’t looking back.

If the political situation is FUBAR – and it is… and if the economic situation is FUBAR – and it is… then we’re left holding a hand-lettered sign:

Ideologues and fanatics from right and left (mostly right) will gibber and howl, trot out their buzzword propaganda and try to stifle any kind of discussion, much less real debate, about making any change – because they know exactly what that change must be and they’ve convinced themselves that if they can prevent anyone speaking the truth about our situation, they can somehow prevent any change from taking place. In all honesty, they’ve been pretty successful; anyone with two brain cells to rub together could see this train wreck coming decades ago, many did, and said so, and were buried under an avalanche of scorn and derision. See Peter Schiff being laughed at when he accurately predicted the crash here , see the saga of Brooksley Born, read Krugman, Stiglitz, Roubini, Black, Galbraith the Younger, remember how Elizabeth Warren went down in flames… this isn’t a recent revelation: read Galbraith the Elder or John Maynard Keynes; this goes way back.

And it’s not that we don’t have latter-day prophets: Chris Hedges sums up the current situation nicely: here or you could read anything recent by Chomsky, or Howard Zinn for that matter. The information is out there and has been out there for quite some time – so why don’t we ‘get’ it?

I think it comes down to three dysfunctional syndromes we exhibit as a nation:

The Not My Problem Syndrome

This is familiar to everyone: you have a job, your wife has a job, little Johnny is on the baseball team, little Susie is taking ballet lessons. The mortgage is under control, the college fund is looking good, you’re two years into the car financing and you’re planning that vacation to Cabo… not you? Me neither, but there are enough elements in that scenario that people can relate to and they don’t really want to know about the neighbors down the street who had to move out last month. Or the guys who seem to be on every street corner with handwritten cardboard signs: “Will work for…” After all, you never hear about this stuff on the news, so it can’t be that bad, can it? Besides, what can I do? I voted for the hopenchange guy, I don’t want people to suffer… but I’ve got my own problems to take care of…

There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with this guy, he’s just been protected from the reality of his environment and trained to apathy about acting to make things better… and it’s certainly a lot easier to watch ‘Jersey Shore’ or “American Idol’ than to write a letter to your Congressperson or walk a picket line in the ‘free speech zone’.

Until, you get sick and lose the job, or get riffed so the CEO can make his quarterly numbers and collect that fat bonus check, or – any one of a thousand things that throws you on the scrap heap where your neighbors avert their eyes and say to themselves: not my problem.

Those annoying activists, y’know, the ones who keep pestering you to get up and do something? They’re actually on your side – the flacks you hear on the radio and on the TV, telling you that ‘it’s all good’, things are gonna turn around, just be patient. These folks are your enemy, they are lying to you to keep you quiet because there is only one thing they fear: millions of people in the streets, telling them to get out.


The Strongman/Savior Syndrome

No foul on anyone with this one, it goes back about 3 million years: the strongest ape leads tribe because: who’s gonna say ‘No’ to him? We see it all over the place today: starlets who think they’re immune to the police, athletes who have hissy fits when they’re not worshipped, newspaper magnates who think it’s fine to delete the voice mail of child kidnap victims on the chance they can steal the kidnappers’ ransom demands (nothing personal, just business). It’s the basis for all our hierarchies, from priests and kings, warlords and dictators, corporate CEOs and imperial presidents. The nature of the beast, one might say. We run to it when things are bad: got severe problems? Look for the White Knight to solve ‘em. In a terminal jam? Hope for the 7th cavalry to charge in for the rescue. We constantly look for saviors and gurus to extricate us from our messes. It pretty much hard-wired.

In the political world that means, dictatorships, tyrannies, warlords or, at best, feudalism with all its inefficient chaos and destruction. Democracy doesn’t really come into it. Depressingly, if you look at democratic rebellions throughout history, almost all of them end up with some strongman or other taking charge and trying to build an empire. This isn’t surprising given that rebellions need leaders and leaders are strongmen and strongmen see no reason to relinquish power once the ancien regime has been swept away.

The Boiling Frog Syndrome

The way to cook frogs (or lobsters for that matter) is top put them in a pot of cold water and increase the heat gradually. By the time the water gets hot enough, they’re already cooked. We’re pretty much cooked – it’s taken about 30 years by my count, you may choose an earlier of later start point, but the deed is done: democracy is on its way out in this country.

For a long time I was an advocate for a third (or fourth or fifth) party. I don’t see that any longer as a viable option – the corruption is too far gone, any new party that spontaneously forms will be overwhelmed by money from the outset. Good luck to the Tea Party btw, I don’t agree with their agenda but at this point any effective, disruptive entity is welcome, anything that could help to derail the corporate juggernaut has my support. I just hope they don’t get co-opted by Wall Street too soon – and it’s not looking good.

It’s time to start thinking about what comes after: after the current depression/corporatist coup d’etat now underway, after it becomes clear to everyone that we no longer live in a democracy (or a republic), after we finally wake up and discover that all the money now rests in the hands of the thieves – and no, they’re not giving any of it back.

There will be a time, just before the police start firing on the protestors (in the free speech zones) and the ensuing ‘torches and pitchforks’ riots begin, when it may be possible to institute some structural change. I don’t think this is likely but the protestors in Egypt are trying and I never thought they’d get this far (in all likelihood they will get ground up by the iron fist of the army and it’ll all go to hell under the Muslim Brotherhood).

But if we get the chance, this will be the time to build America: 2.0.

OK, that’s pretty depressing, you say, but what have you got to replace version 1 with? Those were some pretty smart guys and the founding documents they wrote have stood up pretty well for 225 years.

Well, I think we have to start by acknowledging that the America train has gone off the track and needs some drastic reworking to get it back on track.

Unh… OK, so what would that look like?

A Constitutional Convention

To address the systemic problems mentioned above and to make the structural changes that are necessary if we are to move forward as a nation, we’ll need a constitutional convention. This will be hard to do but it is possible if enough people are convinced that it is required.

There are two ways to initiate an Article V convention:
A two thirds majority vote by both houses of Congress

An application for a convention by two thirds of the state legislatures

While convincing two thirds of Congress to vote to create such a convention would doubtless be the faster, more efficient way to do this, it is unlikely that either of these dreadfully corrupt bodies would be able to summon the courage to do so. That leaves the longer, more difficult route of going through state legislatures. One thing is for sure, this is an idea fraught with danger: will corporatists thugs try to take it over? Of course they will. Will avalanches of money be thrown at participants to buy them off? Of course that will happen. But there’s also the intriguing possibility that right wing interested parties will support this idea for their own purposes and that corporate interests will think they can secure their control over us by some well placed bribes to whomever participates in the convention…. In fact they will be certain of this. But if we are forewarned of these dangers we can be prepared to counter them, if we can counter them through preparedness, organization and focus, we may be able to enact…sanity.

If it’s not yet clear if we’ll be able to make a convention happen or how we’ll ensure that we get the changes we need, nut in the meantime there’s still the job of deciding what those changes will be…

The US Constitution was adopted in 1787, just 12 years after James Watt developed the first commercially useful steam engine and just 50 years before Samuel Morse demonstrated his telegraph. There is no doubt that the framers were extraordinary men who deliberately tried to create a blueprint for freedom that would last for the ages. They included the amendment process to keep it updated and they did their best to address the crucial problems of their time: preventing the takeover of a religious theocracy, keeping power out of the hands of a would-be dictator, protecting the individual from the state and the states from the federal government. But… there were some problems they could not resolve, see ‘slavery’ for example and there were other problems they had no way of knowing about: the rise of corporate power, for example. Nor could they have possibly have known anything about the explosion of technology that was just around the corner.

These are now our problems and now may be our opportunity to resolve them. You must have ideas about this, I have some ideas myself – we can start by talking about them… time for a change.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

To the Libertarian/Randites - an open letter

I haven’t written in a long time, I’ve spent the last year or so in reflective mode, trying to see a path that doesn’t just go over old ground: yes, we know Obama is an idiot, we knew it first… so what? The coming campaign for 2012 is, sadly, predictable – unless HRC reconsiders… but even then, we get the benefit of competence, intelligence, leadership… in the context of political corruption even the Gilded Age couldn’t comprehend. The solutions I can see would require an emergence of will and determination in this country that I don’t know if we even possess anymore… I will continue to put out ideas and plans for those who are interested but it’s more in the vein of “rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

I don’t often get riled anymore, chalk it up to cynicism or burnt out faith in my fellow man. I more or less expect the daily freak show of stupidity and venality that parades across our ‘informational’ display devices these days. Like Captain Renault in ‘Casablanca’ I am faux “Shocked!, Shocked! To find out that there is gambling going on here!”.

But every once in a while, there occurs an act so vile, so venomous, so…evil, that I have to take notice or forfeit my ‘moral superiority’ card.

Such an event took place the other day during the so-called Tea Party debate:

From the Sam Stein article on the debate: here


A bit of a startling moment happened near the end of Monday night’s CNN debate when a hypothetical question was posed to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas). “What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn’t have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? Are you saying society should just let him die?” Wolf Blitzer asked.

“Yeah!” several members of the crowd yelled out.

Paul interjected to offer an explanation for how this was, more-or-less, the root choice of a free society. He added that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing.

This is depraved, there is no other word for it.

I feel like the prophet Isaiah - damning the Jews for their acts of injustice and cruelty.


The problem is that the logic of Libertarianism leads, ineluctably, to this position: I am answerable only to myself, I can do anything I choose, regardless of the consequences to others, there is no injustice or cruelty except insofar as it might impact me or anything I choose to do. I have no responsibility whatsoever to any other person on earth and I don't give a damn whether they live or die.
This is why Libertarianism is evil and why anyone who practices it needs to take a long look in the mirror to determine whether they're human any longer.

...but I'm not sure I can say that these days, it’s way too popular to be a monster...

I like Ron Paul, in a ‘motley fool’ kind of way, I like his quips, his iconoclastic stance, his impertinent windmill jousting at the establishment, he’s a lot of fun to watch…

But Ron Paul is a fraud, always has been, because he is forsworn, because he took an oath before he became a Libertarian – the Hippocratic oath, the one that says “First, do no harm.” The one that mandates service to others - that countermands his Libertarian “Me First and Fuck You” creed on the most basic level. He tries to get by that oath, even in his response above, he tries to avoid responsibility by saying “that communities and non-government institutions can fill the void that the public sector is currently playing” – so Ron Paul’s logic is: I don’t have to care about anyone because someone else will always clean up the mess. This, then, is the essential tenet of Libertarianism (and its even more evil stepchild: Ayn Randism): I don’t give a shit about you or anyone else and I don’t have to because there’s always some other ‘dumb fuck’ (Mark – Facebook - Zuckerberg’s definition of his customers) who will clean up the mess I create/ignore/leave behind.

Libertarianism and Randisim (they’re just different facets of the same depraved psuedo-philosophy, very similar to the Nazi perversion of Nietzsche) are not about the glorious brightness of the rugged individual making his Galt-like way against the tides of mindless bureaucracy and the envy of the masses of mediocrity.

No.

The truth is that Libertarianism and Randism both are about denial and exclusion, about selfishness and venality, about abandoning responsibility not claiming it, about the vast disconnect with the human race, reducing all others to ciphers (read Camus to see what I mean). In fact, they are the modern banners of the elemental fear of ‘the other’ that limits us, constrains us, separates and devalues us. And a further truth is that they make us weak, not strong, each of us an island, a castle, inviolate and sufficient unto itself – and, oh, such easy prey for the Hitlers, the Maos… ‘monsters from the Id’, indeed.

For the real world impact of Ron Paul’s (and Alan Greenspan, Phil Gramm, Grover Norquist – the list goes on, but notice they’re all very, very rich) plans for you and me, read this, yes, I know it’s from the Daily Kos, I’m assuming you’re not so stupid as to think they never have a valid point: here

Remembering her brother, Susan from 29 writes:

I had planned to write another separate diary about his journey through what passes for health care in a nation fixated on the profits that that care brings. In a nation where his death was cheered in front of a panel of politicians, none of whom had the decency to object. It is not yet a capital crime in this nation to be uninsured.

And

His buddies came up with the $2000 a proctologist wanted to do an outpatient surgery. But the hospital wanted $20,000 for use of the room for the brief procedure because he was uninsured. Because the pain didn’t matter half as much as the profit.

Those all I’ll quote because you should read her entire essay. So here’s your out: I’m not going to just drop in quotes from this piece, give you the gist and let you slide without getting hurt, I don’t think it would be right, she’s writing from a place of pain I hope never to know – but this is the real world, not the make believe, fantasy, flag-waving bullshit paraded about by your ‘representative’ on the 6 O’clock news. If you have the fortitude to read about something real, perhaps even connect in a tenuous way to the experience of someone other than yourself, read on.

If you’re a Libertarian or a Randite, of course you won’t, because you don’t really give a damn about someone else’s life or experience: after all, there’s nothing in it for you.

Just between us: go to hell.