Grand Unified Theory of American Politics

Or: It's my blogsite and I'll rant if I want to.

But admit it. Down deep (if not at the surface, where it drives everyone else nuts), you've got it all figured out. The proliferation of personal blogs is testament to this tendency. I believe it's healthy, for it was obvious to me that the Establishment was not getting the job done. Indeed, that is my thesis. The Establishment has become irrelevant to the actual human condition. It is no longer ameliorative, it is not responsive, it is not anything but a money-making racket. Do I overstate my case? Actually, I think I understate the case. Everyone writing a blog, for the most part (not the ones dedicated to different ways of making zabaglione - maybe), are figuratively that character in "Network," the TV executive who realizes (in Paddy Chayevsky's brilliant formulation) that everything is corrupt and are shouting out their (virtual) windows, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore."

The country is at that brink. Something like 3 or 4 people in the nation "approve of the job the Congress is doing." In effect, everyone hates all of them, all the time. This represents sound judgment. For example, if we were to schematically represent the "range" of viewpoints of all these tiresome people "running" for President (at a point some 17 months before the actual election), we might do it this way: Suppose using the x-axis only we were to group all the "plans" and "initiatives" along this horizontal line, with the "liberal" ideas toward the left and the "conservative" ideas toward the right. Let us confine all the data points which these "ideas" represent to the ordinates 0 through 10. A dark cluster of points, I submit, would be found around the 7.5 mark. You would find nothing to the left of 5, and nothing to the right of 9. This squashing of "acceptable" ideas is what Noam Chomsky termed "manufacturing consent." It is a bias toward the conservative, the "reasonable," the usual, the already-done-that.

In this world, a proposal by a Presidential candidate to actually cut the military budget, by any amount, would be considered radical. The debate is about how much to increase the budget; a "liberal" might say, "Well, how about 3%?" The conservative, after branding the liberal a seditious insurgent, would decry this "starving" of the defense establishment which will make America "less safe." The medical care system is broken. If one-sixth of the populace has no medical insurance now, about 50 million, it is a matter of time (and not much) before the diverging lines of cost (upward) and people who can afford insurance (downward) will double this number, so that 100 million people, a full third, will be uninsured and effectively shut out of all but emergency care. The United States, at the federal level, is doing absolutely nothing about global warming. All it does is talk. The candidates offer tepid ideas about how to "approach" it. No one has the guts to discuss how draconian, how radical the adjustments in American life really have to be to deal with the problem. The nation is bankrupt. The federal government is simply printing money and issuing phony statistics to hide the resulting inflation (it doesn't include "food" or "fuel" in the calculation - do you ever need those?) and devaluation of the dollar. It borrows money like your drug addict relative with the get-rich-quick scheme. It borrows money to continue a stupid war that both parties lack the courage to simply shut down, $100 billion the last go-round, all of it made possible by money the Chinese recycle to us to keep us afloat.

While the government spends $8 billion per day for all its farflung operations (literally: $2.9 trillion/365 days) and never says no to a call to "support the troops," it has let Amtrak die a slow death by refusing, a few years ago, to appropriate the $2 billion its new and enthusiastic director said was essential to revitalize the railroad. Not $2 billion a year, or $2 billion every week, as with Iraq, but on a one-time basis. No, let's drive cars. Big cars with shitty mileage, in fact. The Republocrats run a kind of "guided democracy" of the kind we thought was so laughable in Mexico when the PRI could not be dislodged. Or when the Politburo held sway in the Soviet Union. Options within a narrow bandwidth are considered "reasonable," even if they cannot possibly get the job done, because they satisfy vested interests and are consistent with the psychology of previous investment.

The blogosphere has already produced some "Establishment" sites, such as the Huffington Post, which are mainly propaganda organs for the Democratic Party. Arianna Huffington has produced, in fact, an on-line 'Zine, and its commercial trappings are now smothering its once daring and subversive fire. She must have figured out how to make money, a lot of it, with the site. Once that happens, of course, the radicalism is scaled back. One must not disturb the other passengers on the Titanic. The Democrats, who are doing nothing, are the temporary beneficiaries of Republican revulsion. The Republicans, unchecked, were so bad that the nation mistook the Democrats for avenging heroes. They're not at all. They never make any real noise about the Constitutional atrocities committed by George W. Bush. A few hearings, a speech now and then at a Congressional session. Impeachment is too "radical." Restoration of habeas corpus or the Bill of Rights is too "radical." Ending a dumb and ruinous war is too "precipitous." National healthcare is too "socialistic." Joining the rest of the civilized world in dealing with carbon dioxide emissions is too "green."

Legislators in Washington, D.C. live in an insulated world where they make a decent living, receive the best medical care, have large staffs to do the work, and can flaunt power in feckless ways. They are most drawn to issues which have no impact on the real life of Americans. The "immigration" bill is a clear case in point. Discussing how and when to grant citizenship to millions and millions of illegal immigrants sounds important, but it isn't. The bill will have no economic impact on the United States. It will deal neither with our huge environmental problems nor with our looming financial meltdown. That is why the solons like the issue: they can engage in bombast and oratory about our "nation of immigrants" and tell stories about their granddads, or alternatively can indulge in jingoistic soliloquies about America losing its Americanness. Either way, they can take another few months to produce a "landmark" bill which will have nothing to do with anything. The illegal aliens among us will go on living here, working, paying sales and property taxes if not income taxes, having children and ignoring the law. The Congressfolks will then appear before a bank of microphones and smile like idiots about their important accomplishment, and hope that no one notices that this bill is the direct result of failing to enforce an identical bill passed twenty years ago.

I think the system is beyond redemption, and in fact is no longer even designed to solve problems. Usually, I quit about here, about 350 words in. However, this is my Grand Unified Theory, and an abnormal expatiation may be necessary, if not necessarily in order. It is pretentious, of course, to use terms like "unified theory," which is a term borrowed from physics. It has something to do with Einstein's attempts to consolidate quantum theory with relativity. Or maybe the modern attempt to reconcile gravity within a quantum framework. I don't really know. Writers in the social "sciences" like to lace their writing with references to "rigorous" stuff. Christopher Hitchens, for example, likes to pretend he has a detailed appreciation of concepts such as "punctuated evolution" and cosmology in his "god is not great" book. He doesn't, of course, but it's enough to fool the general reader, and that's all that counts. You should not take my "grand unified theory" seriously for the same reason, because it's all bullshit from the get-go. So what? It's my blog. But theories have theorems, or propositions. I know that much. For example, Einstein's Special Theory dealt with equations for mass under acceleration: dilation of time, increase of mass, decrease of length, etc. So I have them too, because I want to be rigorous, just like Christopher Hitchens.

Theorem #1: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is a dangerous myth. Mark Twain once referred to "Congressional idiots," then said: "but I repeat myself." At this point in history, a career in legislation is like a career in car sales or real estate brokerage, and the entry requirements are about comparable. As a lawyer who has spent his professional life trying to decipher the crap these people write, trust me on this. Think about it: what other line of work can you get into without real credentials, talent or personal capital, solely on the basis of bullshit, and yet acquire a good salary, a staff, and apparent power? The mediocrities in Congress, above all, do not want to give these sinecures up. As C. Wright Mills explained, the first impulse of those in power is to remain in power. This disinclines members of Congress from taking any kind of risky action.

Theorem #2: The Scared-of-their-Shadows-Solons cannot react to uncomfortable impulses from the real world. Global warming is an excellent example of this principle. The real solutions are "radical," in the classical etymology of the word, meaning "root." One must go to the "root" of the issue, the way we produce energy for manufacture, transport and production of electricity and heat. To undertake a real solution, the solons would need to upset vested interests who are more interested in remaining vested than in long-term consequences. Upsetting such interests would violate Theorem #1. Thus, Congress would prefer to tinker and to propose timelines which are politically acceptable but irrelevant to atmospheric science. George W. Bush does not care because he plans to resume drinking on January 20, 2009, at about 3 pm.

Theorem #3: Since Congress cannot react to conditions in the real world, it exists solely to perpetuate itself and to give the appearance of crucial importance. Congress is not important; indeed, it is an impediment. As I said in another post, any cashier could have written George W. Bush a check to continue his stupid war. I will detail in another post the truly revolting game which Nancy Pelosi played in order to pretend to oppose the war. It was her attempt to finesse both Theorems #1 and #2.

Please bear these theories in mind as you go about your quotidian, outside-the-Beltway life. The first principle is to protect yourself from the effects of the U.S. Congress, although, as demonstrated by the draft legislation which Nancy Pelosi's Democrats just unveiled which will invalidate California's global warming initiative (under the "Preeemption Clause" - don't you love it?), this is not always so easy.
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