Democracy in a Complex Age

"However, during the 1850s, Know-Nothing supporters came out of the proverbial closet and formed the American Party. It championed restrictions on immigration, exclusion of the foreign-born from voting or holding public office and a 21-year residency requirement for citizenship. By 1855, 43 Congressmen were American Party members; in 1856, it backed Millard Fillmore for president, who secured nearly 1 million votes, a quarter of all votes cast. The growing battle over slavery led to its demise." David Rosen, "The New Know-Nothings."

I recently heard Eliot Spitzer, one of the more trenchant and perspicacious of the TV political talking heads (also a fearless and effective anti-corruption crusader who, for that very reason, had to be hounded from office so that Fraud As America's Business Model could proceed unimpeded), sum up the modern Republican Party as follows: The GOP is no longer a single, monolithic party representing country club members and pasty-white Commie baiters. Rather, it has degenerated into three separate factions.

The first phalanx remains the golf playing martini drinkers who are interested in politics to the extent it either (a) leaves them alone to make money or (b) channels public money into their business uses, and have no interest in government as a guarantor of social welfare. The second group is the Tea Party, a largely incoherent cohort with poorly-defined political goals who seem to want contradictory things, such as limited government with a strong military establishment dedicated to fighting endless wars. The third group is comprised of the theocrats, mostly Christian Evangelicals who want America returned to a simpler time when sex was suppressed, abortion illegal, marriage (and divorce) only between Christian men and Christian women and generally disfavor any intellectual developments in the modern world which have occurred after the Enlightenment, such as evolution, cosmology, paleontology or climate science.

Since these three tranches do not share common "ideological" ground, it is impossible for any one candidate in the GOP primaries to command a convincing majority, and this situation accounts for the difficulty Mitt the Vulture Capitalist has had in "closing the deal," as they say on the cable news networks.

In line with the idea that there is nothing new under the sun, Mr. Rosen's recall of the Know-Nothings of the 1850's is instructive. The name of the party was derived not so much from a love of ignorance and fondness for the usual scapegoating as from a feigned ignorance concerning domestic terrorism (blowing up synagogues, attacking minorities, the usual Klannish stuff) carried on by the more militant Know-Nothing cadres.

I can certainly sympathize, to a degree, with the plight of the Tea Party activists and even the Evangelical theocrats as they struggle to figure out what happened to America in its desuetude (roughly from 1973 to the present, the long decline after the post-war boom of 1946 to the first oil shocks). America, in a sense, got taken away from the Middle Class, and the thrashing and scapegoating, as in the mid-1800's as the Peculiar Institution which had given the South an economic advantage of free labor, came under attack. Now the entire country is under siege as the result of the globalization of labor and competition for increasingly scarce non-renewable natural resources, such as oil. It's not surprising that the usual scapegoats would emerge: illegal aliens, gays, and now Rick Santorum suggests that pornography has sapped the national vitality, much as flouride in an earlier age sapped our precious bodily fluids and left us vulnerable to the Red Menace.

Simple answers are appealing because it's nearly impossible to understand the true complexities of the modern political-economic reality in this country. To take one example, consider the question, dear to the Tea Party heart, of whether the Wall Street banks should or should not have been bailed out in 2008-09. Hank Paulson, a Republican, Treasury Secretary under Bush, and a Wall Street player from way back, claimed that "tanks would be in the streets" if the banks were not bailed out. In general the new Tea Party cadres in the Republican caucus in the House were opposed to bailouts and TARP, its acronymic symbol, which set up an intra-party schism (along the lines described by Eliot Spitzer). In retrospect, the TARP battle in the House was one of the early signs that the GOP was undergoing a fundamental change. I remember thinking (and writing) at the time that it seemed strange the Republicans would ever do anything which could be seen as anti-Big Business.

Meanwhile, many liberal Democrats were in favor of the bailouts, along with learned pundits like Paul Krugman and Democratic insiders like Tim Geithner, the incoming Treasury Secretary and former head of the New York Federal Reserve. Obama was for the bailouts (or appeared to be, it's always difficult to tell where he actually stands on anything), John McCain was for the bailouts.

Others, such as Nuriel Roubini of NYU and William Black of the University of Missouri, thought that certain of the big banks should be nationalized, their corporate suites cleaned out, and their assets taken into receivership. The concept of "moral hazard," that a bank which can run any sort of unconscionable risk can nevertheless have its losses "socialized" while retaining all the bonuses and ill-gotten gains (that is, from fraud), sets up a pattern of recurring irresponsibility.

The champions of bailouts, such as Krugman, cited dangers such as bank runs if the Too Big to Fails were allowed, after all, to fail, and a total freezing up of credit (which seems to have occurred anyway) and cascading business failures leading to a Depression; thus, the preference for maintaining the status quo and the same gang of bankster operators were left in charge, more monopolistic and rapacious than ever.

How does one resolve the issue? One thing is certain: it is not possible to run a controlled experiment on the economy in such a situation. The bailout advocates, such as Paulson and Geithner, can issue dire warnings and argue no other course was possible, but we really have no way of knowing. Yet among the Tea Party activists, this has become an article of faith, along with a very certain attitude that the Federal Reserve system should be dismantled and replaced with some fixed marker of currency value, such as gold.

We're fond of believing that democracy can work its way through any muddle, but it's very obvious that issues of this kind (and many other policy issues, such as the privatization of pension plans versus Social Security, or the nationalization of health care versus private medicine or ceding of issues of health care and pensions to the local level versus the national) are enormously complicated problems requiring exhaustive research and objective analysis to get anywhere near a clear understanding. And the public, meanwhile, is fairly certain that members of Congress do not approach such issues "exhaustively and objectively," but simply bend with the venal whims of corporate lobbyists.

In other words, there really isn't any way for this system to function democratically anymore, which is why the political process is the giant mess it has become. Everything has been reduced to slogans, bumper stickers, talking points and TV ads because, realistically speaking, a very small percentage of the voting populace has any realistic chance of understanding these complexities in an informed manner, and voting accordingly. Thus, one answer to Thomas Frank's telling question in What's the Matter with Kansas?, that is, why do the middle class people of the Great Plains vote against their own interest, is that they can't even figure out what their own interests are in such a complicated contraption as the American political system.

So Eliot Spitzer's tripartite analysis makes sense. The fat cats vote to keep taxes down (a simple issue), the Evangelicals vote in line with a 2,000 year old book full of old Hebrew wisdom, and the Tea Party people vote for any damn thing on the agenda as long as it sounds kind of angry and anti-Big Government, provided it's not the parts of Big Government they like.

And I really don't see any way this is going to change at all in the foreseeable future. It isn't that the system isn't functioning properly; it's at the point where it can't function at all.

Obama Sets the Stage for Real Fascism?

Thanks to Eastern philosophy, I think I'm getting closer to sorting out my conflicted feelings about Barack Obama. I had fallen prey to the Western logical trap of "duality," of thinking in terms of opposing categories, so that to harbor suspicions about Obama's actual bona fides as a progressive or transformative leader placed me squarely in the yahoo camp of Birther Nation, Glenn Beck Crazies and other perplexing subgroups, with their mystifying, usually ungrammatical signs. (Why the hyphen between "Christian" and "Nation," for example?)

I realize it's not really like that. The Obese/Type II Diabetic March on Washington last weekend (which David Brooks found so inspiring, in his usual clueless way, because he saw some white people talking to black people), in which a large group of the White Dispossessed expressed their rage at Things in General, in its own paradoxical way shed light on the issue. I realize now. looking back over the last decade or so, that I was so shocked by the elevation of a genuine moron, George W. Bush, to the office of the Presidency that I made the mistake of believing that his election was some kind of aberration. Closer to the truth, it represented a trend line in the movement of a government responsive to the"general electorate" toward one which only uses the general electorate as a means of capturing power so that it can do what it sees as its real work, the maintenance of the status quo for the benefit of large multinational corporations. As is becoming increasingly obvious, this is the real constituency of the only two political parties viable in America.

Barack Obama is the head of one of these two political parties. Ignoring the trend line, the general populace (me included) fell for a spiel about "Change," seeing Obama as in some sense the avatar of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Robert Kennedy and wilfully discounting the modern reality that it's simply not politically possible anymore for a true Change Agent to survive in the political machinery essential to maneuvering toward the top. This obliviousness leaves us "shocked" that Obama turns out to be a kind of Bush in sheep's clothing. Obama is just as committed to fighting the "war on terror," choosing Afghanistan over Iraq (because Afghanistan is the "hip" war); he's just as bad and unconstitutional as Bush in denying habeas corpus rights to terror-war captives, creating a legal black hole in Bagram as opposed to the disfavored Guantanamo; worse than Bush in codifying a system of "preventive detention," a major break from a legal tradition begun with Magna Carta; just as craven where Wall Street is concerned; and a complete sell-out on his signature "health care" reform, where it is becoming obvious that he's only interested in the appearance of having passed something, regardless of whether it's actually ameliorative of the problems of the American Middle Class.

While all this is going on, Obama talks and talks and talks. On talk shows, in speeches, in press conferences. He preaches the gospel of bipartisanship while populist rage, in such forms as the 400 Pound/High Blood Glucose March exemplied, is stoked by Media Manipulators such as Glenn Beck, who may not realize (because of his own insanity) how dangerous the forces he's encouraging are.

One thing that is becoming self-evident is that it's highly doubtful the American people are going to fall for the "Progressive Change Agent" shtick again, so that the real danger, which we may see as early as 2010, is that the "progressives" may lapse back into their bitter apathy (which is their actual Comfort Zone, after all), while the Angry Whites (who, unlike the progressives, actually show up at demonstrations and "town halls") will mobilize and begin winning elections again based not on superior numbers but on superior motivation. I see that as the real danger posed by Obama's sell-out: a return of the disproportionate power of the White Religious Right who take to heart Woody Allen's famous dictum that just showing up is 90% of everything.

Meanwhile, the actual motivation of all these town halls and Teabaggers, "Obamacare," is pretty hard to figure out. It is an omnidirectional sort of rage and frustration which is "anti-government," secessionist, anti-immigrant and fearful of being completely marginalized economically. The people doing the demonstrating are actually the ones who would profit most from a radical transformation of health care in this country. In fact, I think health care is going to be the first Big Fail in our society: it's going to break down completely, because it's impossible to sustain the present system. It depends on the solvency of the Middle Class, and the Middle Class cannot afford what we have anymore. That is unique and unprecedented, although it never gets talked about in those terms. Most adverse social conditions in this country simply hit the poor and already marginalized, and then some "social program" (such as Medicaid or AFDC) is implemented to keep them from expiring altogether. The inability of Middle Class Americans to afford ordinary insurance premiums (which keeps adding to the ranks of the uninsured) is not ameliorated by such welfare programs, and yet there is nothing in the present proposals to do anything about this basic problem, because Obama is too timid (and probably beholden) to attack the problem at its root.

Meanwhile, the real estate market is not expected to recover to its 2006 prices until 2020 or so. Should be an interesting decade, in the sense of the Chinese curse.

Congress Tries to Fake its Way through Health Reform

The amazing Matt Taiibi is out with a new take-no-prisoners essay on health care "reform" in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, and it's definitely worth the read. His main point is that our thoroughly corrupt Congress and curiously passive President are now in a quandary about how to wriggle out of this job without upsetting their corporate paymasters, yet while convincing the general public they did something. Unfortunately, there just isn't any way to deny that the problem of health care in this country is MASSIVE, and yet all they're really set up to do anymore is to give a semi-convincing pantomime of "caring" etc., while most of them actually remain solely obsessed with getting reelected.

Taiibi breaks the process down into steps, or stages of degeneration, beginning with Obama's decision at the outset to give the game away by punting on Single Payer. All the Rube Goldberg machinations in the five bills meandering their way through this circus, staffed by what Taiibi calls "second-rate country lawyers and mall owners," are hopelessly complicated because Obama and the Democrats fled as fast as they could away from this obvious solution, out of fear of upsetting gigantic campaign donors from the Pharma, insurer and Wall Street lobbies. Or, more realistically, of alienating the affections of these parasites by pushing them in the direction of the Republicans. The estimable Bill Moyers made this same point on Real Time Friday night: as uncynical as this conscience of our generation normally is, he ventured the opinion that Obama has become convinced by Rahm Emanuel that Obama will need the campaign contributions from these three sources in 2012 in order to win again. Which seems odd, for a moment, when you consider how much money, and what a large percentage of his overall contributions, Obama raised from individuals in this last campaign. But then you think some more and it makes perfect, corrupt sense: Barack Obama knows now that those individual donors are not going to be there because he's turned into something very unanticipated, simply another politician who sees his highest goal as getting reelected, as opposed to one dedicated to the substance of his governance.

So Obama, instead of forcing the Republicans who want to kneecap his health care plan to begin on their own goal line (by presenting them with Single Payer, which he said during the campaign was his preferred approach), gave them the ball at midfield, by halfheartedly, sort of, once in a while, supporting the "public option." So the Republicans, backed up by hordes of uninformed Teabaggers and Dittoheads, as usual determined to support government policies (such as tax cuts for the wealthy) which have as their object the exact opposite effect from that which they think they're supporting, had only to neuter this contraption in order to render health care "reform" a dead letter. And anyone who takes the time to read the actual "content" of these various public options floating around the Capitol will quickly conclude that the Republicans have succeeded.

Paul Krugman todays muses that maybe the country has simply become ungovernable because of the influence of Big Money on the political process. That's one word to use, but the country is in fact being "governed," just not to the benefit of 90% of the population. This was the inevitable result of unbridled and unregulated capitalism, given its greatest impetus during the Reagan years. With the force of a natural law, heirarchical economic systems which have no effective counterweight in the form of a strong, central and regulating government inevitably skew wealth toward a smaller and smaller percentage of the population, and then the government itself becomes simply a vassal of Big Business interests until there is essentially an identity of purpose between wealthy elites and the politicians they control by funding their reelection campaigns. Such a process has happened many times before in world history, and it always ends the same way. At a certain point, the great "underclass" realize they've been screwed and the phony allegiances they feel to Democrats or the Republicans or the Nazis or the Politburo or the French aristocracy begin to fray, and they finally see what has happened. We're only at the stage now where demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, in a search simply for ratings and personal wealth and devoid of any real talent or moral content, can nevertheless exploit the "political" differences and convince the uninformed and dispossessed that Obama is in some way both a "Socialist" and a "Fascist" (Americans are not big on historical accuracy), and that health care reform, which this poor white trash who show up at these town halls armed to the teeth need more than anyone, is a government plot to snuff their grandmothers. "Only a pawn in their game," sang Bob Dylan. Yes indeed.

North Korea Plans North American A-Bomb Test

June 2, 2009 (New York Times) - In a relentless approach to raising both the stakes and the visibility of his country's atomic bomb program, President Kim Jong-Il announced today that North Korea's next nuclear test would be conducted in mid-town Manhattan sometime "within the next couple of weeks."  Having successfully tested a 13-kiloton bomb at an underground site in North Korea recently, the Dear Leader stated that he was in no mood "to fok awound" and served notice that his country's nuclear ambitions would not be deterred by Western pressure or threats.

Nevertheless, top Administration officials were quick to respond.  "This is outrageous and unacceptable," said President Barack Obama in answer to a question from Katie Couric in a network TV interview last night.  "America has shown restraint so far and has agreed to talk without preconditions to North Korea about its nuclear program.  But exploding an A-bomb at the corner of 57th Street and 7th Avenue cannot but retard the progress of these talks. I condemn this decision to detonate a nuclear bomb in one of America's iconic cities, a melting pot and symbol of all that makes America great, in the strongest possible terms."

Vice President Joe Biden joined the President in criticizing the latest North Korean initiative. In an interview on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, the garrulous VP laid it on the line in particularly candid terms:  "You know, I just don't get this guy, Chris.  I mean, what's in it for him?  He's got the poofy hair and he looks like he could use a little sun. The family name's Kim, for all I know he's the real deal, it's not personal. People talk about my hair, too, sure, but this is an A-bomb, for crying out loud, and he's setting it up to go off right in midtown.  I know that area, there are some good restaurants there, the Knicks play right down the street at the Garden, and hey I know what people are saying, the Knicks, will anyone even notice?  But that's neither here nor there, Chris, I mean for crying out loud, this is way, way, way over the line. I'm telling everybody I know not to go anywhere near New York till we get this thing sorted out.  I mean, come on.  An A-bomb?"

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in what is becoming characteristically frank and unguarded language, admitted that the U.S. had "taken its eye off the ball" in fighting the ghosts of the 9-11 hijackers by launching two wars against Muslim countries, neither one of which any hijacker ever visited or called home.  "I frankly believe we have misallocated American resources by overemphasizing the need to invade countries which use Arabic letters or have mosques or something," said a stern and obviously concerned Gates.  "We have managed to burn through enormous amounts of money, gotten lots of people killed, including tons of our guys, so they definitely look like real wars, so that part appeals to me. We just haven't been clear on why we're doing it, and that's probably because we're not sure. But while we've been occupied with that, Kim Jong-Il has gone ahead with this atomic bomb program, and now he's tested a big one underground, and he's testing missiles, and while we were surging in Aghanistan he went ahead and set up this nuclear blast in midtown Manhattan and I'm thinking there could be hell to pay if he succeeds with this one."

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, at the White House press conference this morning, echoed the comments of other Administration officials.  "The President has a lot on his plate, and believe me we didn't plan to start our term in office with the worst recession since the Thirties, and now this, an A-blast on 57th Street, but President Obama has said many times that we're going to have to be able to deal with a number of crises all at once, whether that's the ideal way to do things or not.  So this Manhattan bomb is something that will get a lot of his attention, and he'll work with the Congress in a bipartisan way to come up with an appropriate response."

Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Majority Leader, said that a focused response from the Senate was highly unlikely.  "We just don't have the 60 votes," he said.

Slouching toward the poor house

Maybe it's just the way things are now.  The fossilized approach to all problems, no matter how big, is all that's possible.  I read Michael Moore's take on the failure of General Motors, something he's followed since the early days of its decline (his "Roger & Me" being his first big movie hit), and I think he's right.  In part, of course, I think he's right because it's what Waldenswimmer said several months ago.  The auto factories owned by GM should be transformed into modern transportation factories building mass transit (light rail) and high speed rail locomotives and rolling stock, with some aspect of its ongoing car business used to build fuel-efficient hybrids and electric cars.  It's time to phase the internal combustion engine out, and put all those trained factory employees to work building technology with a future.

Michael cites the example of World War II as precedent: during the war, GM stopped building cars and converted to tanks, jeeps and machine guns, among other war-related manufacturing. GM did it fast, too, and did it successfully.  The United States government has invested enormous sums of money in attempts to resuscitate General Motors, more than the capital stock of the company is actually worth.  Why not use that stake to simply buy the corporation and its subsidiaries?  Why this idea that GM is going to "emerge" as profitable by tweaking its economic model?  Why, in other words, this pointless and very expensive magical thinking?

Well, for one thing, FDR isn't President.  The current crop of Democratic "leaders" just can't pull the trigger, and that includes Obama.  They keep thinking that thinking small will succeed, that an incrementalist approach to overwhelming problems will restore the U.S. economy from its present moribund state to a thriving, job-producing colossus. It won't.  The recession may "end," but the U.S. economy will nevertheless be stuck at a level of affluence about 40% lower than when the crisis began in July, 2007.  The only way out is to create jobs, and the only practical way to create jobs is to move to a completely different energy paradigm.  Obama keeps using the word "green" as kind of talisman; well, here's a chance to actually implement a "green" solution on a massive scale. 

FDR established Social Security by refusing to believe that the country had been reduced to a state where old folks could be forced to subsist on tins of cat food heated on gas rings.  Obama, faced with a similar crisis in healthcare which affects 50 million people, is stalled in his approach because the medical insurers and hospitals don't like his "public insurance" element, so the "negotiations" have broken down.  This is how blatant the control of business over government has become: if private industry says no, then we can't do it.  So forget single-payer, as Waldenswimmer also said a long time ago.  Blue Cross doesn't like it.  So the effect of all those uninsured Americans is that every year 18,000 Americans die unnecessarily, according to a study by the Institute of Medicine.  Six times as many people die every year as died in the 9-11 attacks, yet we've turned the world upside down to deal with those 19 hijackers who casually walked through our security systems and trained themselves to destroy us using our flight schools, but the expansion of Medicare to cover everyone cannot be done, because...a large group of insurers and hospitals are making more money the other way.  So, instead of actual medical care, let's put all the medical records online.  That should do it, and I'm sure there will never be a problem with hackers accessing the medical records of every living American and broadcasting them all over the world.  Meanwhile, it will look like we're doing something, and that's always the key.

As I said before, I've been reading this history by David Halberstam about the Korean War, particularly that first terrible winter of 1950-51, when the delusions of Gen. Douglas MacArthur led the Marines and Army into a terrifying trap in the far north of Korea.  Surrounded by 300,000 Chinese infantry which MacArthur said simply weren't there, the field leaders of the Marines trapped near the Chosin Reservoir and the Army farther west had to think for themselves.  The most creative, brave and resourceful of those leaders, such as General Paul Freeman of the Army and Gen. O.P. Smith of the Marines (picture above), figured a way out that avoided massacre.  Sometimes doing timid, half-hearted measures simply doesn't work.  FDR recognized that reality.  The current batch of corporate errand boys in Congress and the White House simply don't.  It's quite possible to incrementalize your way to the poor house.

Distinctions without a difference

Admittedly there is a fine line between a skeptic and a crank, and one sometimes finds oneself crossing it unawares, especially if you're in the semi-regular habit of blooging (my portmanteau word for blogging and boogeying at the same time - I haven't checked to see if Maureen Dowd has stolen it).  For example, those who still spend most of their free time (and that's mostly what they must have) perusing the Warren Commission Report for evidence of the Mother of All Coverups probably belong in the Tin Foil Hat Brigade.  But the line is not always clear.  For example, did the CIA introduce crack cocaine into the United States as a result of the work it did for the Contras? What did make building #7 at the World Trade Center fall down on September 11, when no plane actually struck it?

You can't always tell what's really going on.  In the heyday of the Soviet Union, no sane, ordinary citizen of that country ever believed anything the government said; if it was published in Pravda, that was all the proof needed that it was an Official Lie.  The government could lie all the time because there was no effective competing party or group - the Commies controlled everything, the organs of government, the organs of the media.  If the citizenry didn't like them, it didn't matter.

I think some of these elements have taken root in the American system, and the germ of the idea, for me, resulted from reading Dmitry Orlov's writing on American politics.  He lived through the final years of the Soviet state and witnessed its collapse.  What he says about the U.S. is that we now have two Center-Right Parties which no longer have to respond to the actual needs of the citizenry.  There certainly are differences between the Democrats and Republicans and trivializing those differences is a mistake.  The problem is that the differences between the parties are not significant enough to make any real difference in the lives of ordinary Americans, and the ordinary citizen has no one else to vote for.  In effect, the so-called Two Party System has morphed into something akin to the PRC in Mexico during its long tenure of one-party rule, or similar to the Communist Party in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1991.

Take one of my favorite examples, the Crime of the Century by which Congress stole the Social Security Trust Fund.  This was a $2.5 trillion heist.  There is no serious argument that anything else happened; in the early 1980's, Congress foresaw, or at least pretended to see, that the massive retirements of the Baby Boom generation starting just...about...now meant that the system would be insolvent unless FICA taxes were raised to create a trust fund of real money to make up for the short-fall in revenue caused by the retirements and the consequent drain on the system.  Congress took these large annual surpluses and spent them as part of general revenue, replacing the stolen money with Special Issue Treasury Notes, that is, IOUs.  This year the Social Security surplus is down to $3 billion; in better years, in the 1990s, it was closer to $200 billion.  So you don't need to be a swami to see that the inflows are about to become insufficient to pay the outflows, especially as we shed jobs at the rate of 500,000 per month and the Baby Boomers are now drawing on Social Security in increasing numbers.

If Barack Obama were really, really honest, in the old fashioned sense of that word (that is, a commitment to telling the real truth), he would stop with the civil liberties speeches for awhile and explain what happened to the trust fund in just the terms I used above.  Because that's what happned.  He would not talk about "reform" of Social Security (as Bush did before him), or means-testing or raising the cap on FICA taxes to bring in more money or reducing benefits.  He would lay it all out, the actual truth about what Democrats and Republicans did with the money, and then trace where the surpluses were spent, which was on defense.  He would then honestly discuss the excesses of the defense and security budgets, and the costs of fighting these constant wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and tell us that since that's where the money went, that's where he's going to get it back.  He would place the ultimate Sacred Cow on the altar of politics: the Defense Budget.

He won't do that.  He won't do it because, fundamentally, he's part of the system.  Calling foul on his co-conspirators in government, the operatives of the Democratic and Republican Parties, just isn't done.  It makes them all look bad.  So instead he will spend his time telling us why indefinite preventive detention (the hallmark of tyranny, according to Thomas Jefferson) is actually okay, and that it's better to conceal the truth and suppress photographs than to be honest about what we've done, because, again, it makes us all look bad.

And never a word about why the security of our retired senior citizens who depend on Social Security has been imperiled because of Congressional malfeasance and criminality, and never a word of explanation as to why we need to spend more on defense and security than the rest of the world (and all our "enemies" included) combined.  If there is actually a difference between that approach and the lies of Official Truth, I would be curious to know what it is and why the distinction matters.  I don't see it.  I don't see it in this "landmark" credit card bill the Senate is currently congratulating itself for, the elimination of a lot of dumb upticks in rates because of late payments, et cetera.  And yet Congress never addressed the actual means by which the banks fleece the naive and financially unsophisticated - the ridiculous, usurious rates charged by credit card companies in the first place.  25 to 30%?  Can Vito parked in the black car across the street cut you a better deal?  

Congress won't touch that because they don't work for you, and they don't work for you because they don't have to anymore. You want the batshit crazy Republicans or the corrupt Democrats?  Up to you, but don't say you didn't have a choice.

Blogito, Ergo Sum

Naturally a compulsive blogger such as myself is given pause by the Advent of the O.  Does it usher in a new Era of Good Feeling where my admittedly satirical instincts will be inappropriate, even mean spirited?  Maybe so.  I take heart, however, in early signs from the Obama Administration that many of the lampoonable features of the Bush years will survive in the Years of Change.

As one example, I am indebted to Chris Kelly for pointing out that Obama has already violated his own proscription regarding the "revolving door" between private industry lobbying and government service. And not just in a minor, marginally-relevant way: William Lynn, his choice for Deputy Defense Secretary, was the Vice President of Raytheon, and its government liaison, until Thursday of last week.  This falls somewhat short of the two-year blackout period of The O's new ethics rules; indeed, the ink was still drying on the rules when Lynn was tapped for a big new job where he can help decide whether new defense contracts ought to be signed with, oh, say Raytheon, the huge defense contractor.

This isn't just Change we can believe in; this is Change we can blog about.  And despite Barack's well-intentioned promises about avoiding a "Christmas Tree" approach in the "stimulus bill," the CongressClowns are already loading the thing up with baubles and trinkets for their constituents back home.  It does bring to mind the old joke about the shark who offers to help the castaway get from his leaking boat to shore, then eats the man halfway there.  "Why?" is the dying man's last word.  "Because it's my nature," answers the shark.

So asking the Clown Troupe to set aside partisan bickering, self-interest, obeisance to their corporate sponsors who buy their reelections, a chance to grandstand -- Obama & Biden (who surely knew better) were asking these people to act contrary to their nature.  In the face of the most gigantic appropriation bill in American history, with an opportunity to broadcast money like a farmer sowing the fields, was there any chance that Congress would actually exercise restraint simply for the sake of saving the country?

Of course not.  They can't.  One of the hardest lessons to take in, to internalize and believe, is that modern American legislators are careerists.  They are not otherwise successful lawyers, entrepreneurs, doctors, et alia, simply on leave from the private sector where they can make some real money.  These federal gigs are as good as it gets for them, and they hold on to their seats with a death grip.  As the U.S.A. has progressed toward Banana Republicanism, one feature we have come to share with those emerging African and Latin American republics of forty and fifty years ago is that the "civil service" is where the money is.  The "real economy" is an uncertain, scary place where businesses fail left and right, where jobs are scarce, where one lives by one's wits. Contrast this sorry state of affairs with a CongressClown with a full staff, a travel allowance, a salary approaching $200K, guaranteed health care, perks galore.  So their basic "cultural" norm is simple: don't do anything heroic or stupid to get yourself unelected.  Keep your face in front of the camera when some new gewgaw gets signed, appear on C-Span when your committee conducts a hearing, do what the corporate lobbyists tell you to do (let them write your bills, in fact, they're better at it), and spread the money around back home.  And you're good to go.

This behavior is the ultimate Bipartisanship, and its ubiquity is why bloggers will never run out of stuff to write about.  The satirical point of entry is Mark Twain's: "Congress is America's only distinct criminal class."  As things get worse in the Real World, the Clowns become more determined than ever to hang on to their jobs.  One can begin to appreciate why George W. Bush became such a pariah among Republicans, why they refused to be photographed in the same state he was visiting.  He screwed up the game for the Red Team and allowed the ascendancy of the Blues.

But be careful what you wish for.  The Blues now have such a dominant position that the real chance the whole economy could go in the dumper poses an existential peril.  This is not what they signed on for, but if they don't come through, it could be Game Over.  Then what?  They'd have to go back to living (gulp) in America.