This is America - a year later

Is this your mother, your grandmother, your sister, your aunt?  Do you know where she is, how she survives?

Last year I wrote a post about Barbara, the woman who stands outside the building where I work, begging.  She is 75, which is 10 years older than my wife, and she is still there.

She has been hospitalized a couple times that I know of in the past year.  Once was for pneumonia, and I am not sure out the other.  It may have been after she was mugged.    Who mugs a 75 year old woman for the change she has managed to beg in the streets?

She is having more trouble getting around these days, and I no longer see her every day.  And when I do see her she is often using a walker, always at least using a cane.  I used to make sure I had some ones in my wallet, so I could always give her a dollar or two when I saw her.  But as she is able to make it out less frequently, I think perhaps it should be fives or tens now.

I have never seen her intoxicated, never smelled alcohol on her breath, so I suspect that her only crime against society was that she didn't make a lot of money.

If you have no children to take care of you, if you have the temerity to live past the age when you can be useful to the machine, then this is what the Republican Party has planned for you.  They are trying to drive down wages so that you will need to spend every penny they pay you to survive.  Then they will deride you for not saving.

Is this really the America you want?  If not, then fucking do something about it.

What Ron Paul would bring to the debate

For the most part I cannot stomach watching the Republican debates.  There have been way too many of them and they have been long on bullshit and short on substance.  That is because, for the most part the candidates themselves are long on bullshit and short on substance.  The exception has been Ron Paul.

Let me say that much that he has to say is completely wrong.  If his economic policies were every implemented, our slide into feudalism would be completed.  It would be like Europe during the dark ages.  But on the libertarian side, he does get some things right.

But this is my thought.  Both Paul and Obama are intelligent men.  And I suspect a debate between these two would expose once and for all the issues that the American people really need to think about.  It is about what kind of country that we intend to be.

What should the role of government be?  What should the role of business be?  And just as important, what has worked, for the benefit of us all, and what has proved to be a failure?  All this matters, all this needs to be discussed, and I think that, during a debate between these two, that would happen.

How would Obama respond to Paul's observations on the failure of the War on Drugs, of his contention that the Patriot Act is unconstitutional and contrary to all our ideals as Americans?  How would Paul respond the  historical evidence that the middle class has prospered and grown the most during the periods that our tax code was most progressive, and that regulating business conduct had kept us out of this kind of economic malaise since the Great Depression?  These are just a few of the issues where it is important that both sides be heard so that informed choices can be made.

Perhaps I am being naive, but I believe that Paul being the Republican nominee would raise the level of discourse, and allow the real issues facing us to be discussed and debated.  Any one of the other Republican candidates would be running on slogans and personality and character assassination.  Either way, Obama gets re-elected, but a real debate about real issues would do much to elevate the American consciousness on the decisions that lay before us.

There is a war of ideas going in in this country, but the right is doing it's best to conceal what those ideas really are from the public at large.  I think this would get those ideas out in the open.

What Protect IP is really about

The new media has many people scared.  It has the oligarchy scared.  Anyone with a cell phone can record a video of police brutality, of a demonstration of thousands of people, of any event that they would prefer to marginalize, to deny.  But what really makes that an issue is that the video may end up on a blog or on Utube and be viewed by millions of people.

It is really very simple.  If the oligarchy can control what you see and hear, then they can shape what you see as true.  If there are other sources of information that will show you what is really happening, then they lose that control.  Hence, the Protect IP act.

The pretext of this is protecting intellectual property.  That is a worthy goal.  If you put your sweat and effort into producing something, then you expect to be able to reap the rewards.  So if you produce a film, or music, or a novel, then you have a right to expect that someone else will not copy it and sell it, or even give it away.  That is what copyrights are all about.

Now lets look for a moment at the new media,. and how it works.  Think of any of the major alternative news sources, like the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos, or even the quasi mainstream source like yahoo news.  All of them accept commentary, they allow readers to voice their opinions relative to what they have read.  What happens if a commenter posts something quoting a copyrighted source?

Well, under Protect IP, not only is the blog author responsible, so is the web host.  This blog here is hosted by Google, so if you post a comment that someone feels is infringing on a copyright then Google becomes responsible for shutting this site down.  Google becomes the police and the mere complaint by someone requires that this site be shut down.  Now the burden of proof is on me to prove I should be allowed to continue.

Note, I didn't say the the offending content has to be removed, I said Google has to shut me down.  And someone complaining about copyright infringement does not have to prove it to Google, there is no reasonable doubt standard or preponderance of evidence standard that would be necessary in a court of law.  That burden falls on me to justify why my site should be reopened.

Protect IP is about suppressing the truth and nothing else.  That is why it must be defeated.  But, should it become law, then the progressives of this country should invoke another law, the law of unintended consequences.

Any web site which is engaged in soliciting funds for right wing causes, and right wing candidates, should be challenged.  Claims of copyright infringement should flood the service providers, placing them into a constant battle to defend their web sites.  Add to that list the sites of anyone who voted for the law. 

The same rules?

Perhaps someone can explain this to me.

We on the left, would like to limit the influence of corporations and their money, on electoral politics.  Defining a corporation as a person, with all the rights under the constitution afforded a person just seems absurd.  So the struggle goes on to try and rein them in.

Those on the right, would like to limit the influence of unions and their money on electoral politics.  They would be aghast if a union were treated as a person.

How are these two entities different?  Both are composed of people who are the ownership/membership.  Both have a hierarchy that is elected by the ownership/membership to make the day to day decision of operation as well as decisions about political contributions and lobbying.

So why are unions held to a higher standard?
There is never any talk about limiting political activity of a corporation based upon the preferences of an individual shareholder.  And yet the right would say that a union member should be able to object to political contributions made from his or her dues.
When shareholders vote on electing members of the board, or any other business presented to the shareholders for a vote, shares not voting are never characterized as 'no' votes.
Having union dues withheld from your paycheck is no different from having your 401K investment withheld from your paycheck.  Neither is to the benefit of the employer, they are for the benefit of the employee, and yet one is attacked while the other is not.

So here is my suggestion.  In all legislation where there is an attempt to muzzle the unions, the progressives should be fighting tooth and nail to insert 'and corporations' into the text.  Will they fail?  Sure they will.  But at least they will be highlighting the hypocrisy of the right.

Whether or not you can win is not what defines if a fight is worthwhile.  The right relies upon the public not understanding what they are really about.  So every opportunity must be taken to show them for their true colors.

How it would play out here: Part two

When I was growing up, the army was where you went if you had no idea what you wanted to do with your life.  If you were not smart enough for college, you just wanted to get away from home while you figured out what you wanted to do with your life, or you wanted to get away from the high school girlfriend who expected you to marry her, the army was sort of a catch-all.  Then came the Vietnam War.

That war had been around for a while, but it was under the radar of most Americans.  Our military commitment there had been relatively small.  As it grew and grew, and started chewing up and spitting out in pieces more and more of our young men, attitudes toward the army changed.  Eventually the draft was eliminated, and the all volunteer, the 'professional' army emerged.

In Egypt, the military decided that it was not there job to attack civilians to prop up a corrupt regime. In Libya, many in the military defected to the opposition, and actively supported the overthrow of that regime.  What would happen here?

One need only look at the behavior of the police to get a picture of how the military would respond in this country.  They show up at the Occupy Wall street demonstrations in riot gear, even though the demonstrations have been almost universally peaceful.  Of course there have been isolated incidents of trouble, but nothing more than any police officer on a regular patrol might encounter.  And they do not wear riot gear on patrol.

The police are essentially a closed culture.  Protecting each other is the highest law, far more important than protecting you and I or the law.  Why do you think police Internal Affairs units are looked down on by other officers?  It is because they are perceived (an not always correctly) as placing the law above that 'highest law'.

With the advent of the 'professional' army, the same exists there.  Yes, unemployment has helped the military swell it's ranks, but for the most part you have a military that is completely separated from society as a whole.  They will follow orders, even if it means killing unarmed civilians.

In the military, unit cohesion is a matter of life and death.  A military unit that does not work together is ineffective.  Each individual needs to be able to trust that the person beside him will do his job.  But that is not what I am talking about here.  Especially in the wars that we have fought most recently, it has never been about protecting America, defending freedom, or any of that nonsense.  It has been about getting a job done and getting out alive.

Because if soldiers were encouraged to think too much about what the job actually is, then they might find themselves hesitating at just the wrong time.  They might even refuse to follow some orders, or report to someone on some of the things they have seen.

Just following orders, as the Germans said at Nuremberg, is alive and well in the US military.  This is by design, as more and more they are being asked to do things that have nothing to do with safeguarding our country.  So if a movement like Occupy Wall Street starts to really threaten the 1%, and the military gets involved, do not expect any sympathy from them.  It has been drilled out of them.

An observation

I was reading a article on the Daily Kos today, and while the entire article was worthwhile, there was one point it make that stuck in my mind more than the others.  The author said that the markets of today, rather than being vehicles for the creation of wealth, are now vehicles for the concentration of wealth.

That sounds very much like the feudalism of the middle ages.  A small oligarchy which produced nothing controlled most of the wealth.  Food and clothing was produced and consumed, but the society as a whole was stagnant.  Innovation of any sort was suspect as it had the potential of challenging either the interests of the ruling class or those of the church.  Literacy was the exception, rather than the norm, even among the ruling classes.

Which is exactly where we seem to be going.  The public school system is being systematically dismantled, science is being subjugated to ideology, the middle class is being driven to extinction, and ownership of essentially everything is slowly being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands.  Our own home grown version of the Taliban seeks to exercise their control over more and more aspect of our lives.

The Roman empire is crumbling, and the new nobility stands ready to resume their rightful station.

How would it play out here

I was watching the live video feed from Al Jezeera English on the web a while ago, watching the events in Libya unfold as the rebels took Tripoli.  I thought about Egypt, I thought about the other places where events like this have occurred, even going back to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

So a couple of thoughts crossed my mind.  Like how bad would if have to get, before something like that happened here?  And if it did, would enough of our military decide to side with the people to actually put some muscle behind a popular uprising?

It is important to note that in each of the Arab countries with a successful uprising, the government unintentionally turned what were essentially demonstrations of discontent into a revolution by the virulence of their response.  If Gaddafi had, for example, recognized that the demonstrators had legitimate grievances, even if very little changed, he probably would still be in power.

The appearance of sympathy and some token concessions would likely have blunted the anger of the populace.  Instead he proved to them that they were right by his violent response.  It is possible to make the population cower in submission, but it has become harder to do in the age of the internet and social networking.

Demonstrations of any size against the status quo in this country are usually downplayed, while tiny demonstrations in favor or right wing causes are treated as major events.  You need look no further than Minnesota where massive demonstrations in support of organized labor and a dozen tea party members with signs across the street were given equal weight by the mainstream media.   

So the tactic in this country would be very different, it would be to marginalize the demonstrators, try and convince each group that they represented a tiny segment of the population.  I attended a large demonstration in San Francisco before the invasion of Iraq, and one person had a since that was prophetic.  It read "Remember what you see here, because they will lie about it on the news".  And it was very true. Despite massive demonstrations all across the country, the anti-war sentiment was marginalized in the media.

So what would it take?  How many people out of work, how many families tossed onto the streets before there would be enough opposition that the oligarchy feels threatened? 

You only need look to the early union movements to see what has happened in the past.  As recently as 1920, there was the Anaconda Road Massacre where company guards fired on unarmed miners, shooting 17 in the back.  Or look at the Colorado Labor wars of 1902-1903, where the military was used to violently suppress striking miners.  Look to Herbert Hoover's reaction to the Bonus March of World War I Veterans, which eventually led to his downfall and the election of FDR.

In many homes around the country, there is an air of quiet desperation.  How long does this continue, when does the pot boil over?  And on who's side would the military end up?