Halloween Ghosts

Halloween is more complex psychologically than we like to admit. As those ancient pagan Celts knew, the best way to deal with our fears is to objectify them into friendly ghosts. Yet, those spirits also reveal a dark side, the grim reaper that haunts our personal and cultural lives with every waking and sleeping moment.

So on this Halloween let me share some of those ghosts that have come to life and that I fear most. I fear that:

• The War in Iraq is our nation’s most serious blunder from which we and the world will suffer for decades, perhaps centuries, to come;
• Americans still live with a kind of “orientalism” that treats the people of the near east as less than fully human; a racism that undervalues their worth and value as persons; killing persons there is justified so we will be safe on our soil;
• America has become a political system that assigns the fighting of its wars to the underclass;
• As our middle class shrinks and a higher percentage of our wealth is retained by the smallest percentage of our population in US history, our society seems to have settled in for a long winter’s nap of consumption at Wal-Mart’s; our most precious freedom has become the “freedom to consume”;
• We continue to confuse the national self interests of Israel with what is best for American foreign policy;
• America cannot abide the truth that we have already lost the war in Iraq and have not really won a war since W.W. II;
• No strong leader will emerge to lead the Democratic party, and it will break into a number of factions; and
• While our balance of party political affiliations may shift in Congress and many State Houses on November 7^th, it will not result in any major policy changes reflected in our foreign or domestic affairs.

But there is hope that in future Halloweens we can retire some of these worn and useless costumes. Let’s work to bring on the spirits reflected in so much of our past as a nation that used its resources and intelligence to create a world of peace.

Merle

Paranoid or Perceptive?

It is difficult to know what possessed The New Yorker to publish Nicholas Lemann’s article, “The Wayward Press: Paranoid Style” (October 16, 2006). http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060327fa_fact

His thesis is the simplistic notion that international political policy and events can never be the product of the ideological actions of a finite number of powerful and well placed individuals since human behavior is just too irrational, and paranoid induced plots are always just too rationale. Things happen by accident, not plan. Why is he wrong?

Let us take for a paradigm case the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s prime minister in 1953. According to Lemann’s thesis it would be paranoid to think that a relatively small group of persons or “group think agencies” were responsible. It was just “people screwing up”. We know better. The individuals involved were Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Foster Dulles, Donald Wilber, Kermit Roosevelt and agencies like the CIA, British Intelligence, U.S. State Department, and corporations like British Petroliam and U.S. counterparts. This is a lot of folks and many boards and high level committees. But it is still a finite number. Historians sooner or later can sort it all out. Most critical was the kind of momentum of “group think” that took place over a short period of time among this finite number of persons and groups. It is probably impossible to document those who objected in meetings, since they were most likely left behind.

Now why is it not rationale to assume that this same kind of model can be applied to other issues of foreign policy? The Iraq War I stuck in the craw of many neo-liberals (neo-cons) who were eager to complete a war that was never properly ended in their view. 9-11 was a logical rationale for Iraq II. It was only a matter of building the rationale, and the only obstacle was Colin Powell and the U.N.

Isn’t it contradictory to assume that while other states (rogue or actual) are capable of carefully planned international terrorist activities that we are just befuddled by the irrationality and complexity of human events? Perhaps it is part of the neo beltway brainwashing to label as “paranoid” anyone who seeks the truth about how our policies are formulated.

So please, Mr. Lemann, don’t tell us that we are paranoid if we believe that things get done by individuals working through relatively small groups with power and influence. It is called Democracy.

Merle

Paranoid or Perceptive?

It is difficult to know what possessed The New Yorker to publish Nicholas Lemann’s article, “The Wayward Press: Paranoid Style” (October 16, 2006). His thesis is the simplistic notion that international political policy and events can never be the product of the ideological actions of a finite number of powerful and well placed individuals since human behavior is just too irrational, and paranoid induced plots are always just too rationale. Things happen by accident, not plan. Why is he wrong?

Let us take for a paradigm case the overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh, Iran’s prime minister in 1953. According to Lemann’s thesis it would be paranoid to think that a relatively small group of persons or “group think agencies” were responsible. It was just “people screwing up”. We know better. The individuals involved were Winston Churchill, Dwight Eisenhower, Foster Dulles, Donald Wilber, Kermit Roosevelt and agencies like the CIA, British Intelligence, U.S. State Department, and corporations like British Petroliam and U.S. counterparts. This is a lot of folks and many boards and high level committees. But it is still a finite number. Historians sooner or later can sort it all out. Most critical was the kind of momentum of “group think” that took place over a short period of time among this finite number of persons and groups. It is probably impossible to document those who objected in meetings, since they were most likely left behind.

Now why is it not rationale to assume that this same kind of model can be applied to other issues of foreign policy? The Iraq War I stuck in the craw of many neo-liberals (neo-cons) who were eager to complete a war that was never properly ended in their view. 9-11 was a logical rationale for Iraq II. It was only a matter of building the rationale, and the only obstacle was Colin Powell and the U.N.

Isn’t it contradictory to assume that while other states (rogue or actual) are capable of carefully planned international terrorist activities that we are just befuddled by the irrationality and complexity of human events? Perhaps it is part of the neo beltway brainwashing to label as “paranoid” anyone who seeks the truth about how our policies are formulated.

So please, Mr. Lemann, don’t tell us that we are paranoid if we believe that things get done by individuals working through relatively small groups with power and influence. It is called Democracy.

Merle F. Allshouse

On Please, Not That Briar Patch, Mr. President !

At his last news conference President Bush argued that his administration and the Republican congress could take credit for America’s robust economy and the fact that we are safe on the home front. On these two issues he believed American voters would assure a continuation of Republican rule. Democrats should welcome this “briar patch.”

Is the economy strong? In 2001, the President inherited a yearly budget surplus of $284 billion. At that time, he predicted a $516 billion surplus for fiscal year 2006 yet the federal government ran a deficit of $248 billion last year missing its projection by $764 billion. President Bush considered this a “smashing success” calling the numbers "proof of "sound fiscal policies in Washington”. If the President is successful in implementing his economic agenda -- including making his tax cuts permanent for the wealthy -- deficits will total nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, a record high. The income and wealth gap between the upper one percent and the rest of Americans is higher than at any time since the Great Depression of the late 1920s and the purchasing power of the average middle class is about what it was in the mid 1970’s while real wages have not kept pace with inflation for the working person. Finally, our trade balances are reaching a critical point and soon we will be paying out far more to service our debt to the rest of the world than we bring in. Our debt financed consumerism may well spend the end of the American economic hegemony.

Are we more secure on the home front? This claim is more dangerous than delusional given the rate at which our foreign policy is breading the conditions of terrorism and hostility not just in the mid-east, but around the globe. A false sense of security is dangerous.

If our candidates are not talking about these issues, and the war in Iraq, seriously, then our democracy is in greater trouble than even our enemies imagine. The democrats could not have found themselves in a better republican briar patch.

A Transformative Thought

But one persistent fact within this complex history of uneven neoliberalization has been the universal tendency to increase social inequality and to expose the least fortunate elements in any society – be it in Indonesia, Mexico, or Britain – to the chill winds of austerity and the dull fate of increasing marginalization. while such a trend has been ameliorated here and there by social policies, the effects at the other end of the social spectrum have been quite spectacular. The incredible concentrations of wealth and power that now exist in the upper echelons of capitalism have not been seen since the 1920s. The flows of tribute into the world’s major financial centers have been astonishing. What, however, is even more astonishing is the habit of treating all of this as a mere and in some instances even unfortunate byproduct of neoliberalization. The very idea that this might be – just might be – the fundamental core of what neoliberalization has been about all along appears unthinkable. It has been part of the genius of neoliberal theory to provide a benevolent mask full of wonderful-sounding words like freedom, liberty, choice, and rights, to hide the grim realities of the restoration or reconstitution of naked class power, locally as well as transnationally, but most particularly in the main financial centers of global capitalism.

From "A Brief History of Neoliberalism" by David Harvey, Oxford Univ. Press, 2005, p. 118f.

Toward a Political Credo for 2008

A friend asked me about “my politics” the other day. Well, we all know that none of the traditional labels seem to fit any of us anymore, either “conservatives” or “liberals.” Goodness knows, the terms “Republican” and “Democrat” have certainly had a “magnetic shift” in the last century. So I had to abandon labels and come up with those key principles that I’d like to see a major candidate espouse. Sure, not everyone can be perfect, but my ideal candidate will believe in:

• linking social with environmental justice
• a fairer distribution of wealth
• non regressive tax reform
• limitation of corporate power and welfare
• support for the rights and dignity of workers
• a minimum living wage
• support for public education with serious reform (not no-child-left-behind)
• free trade that is also FAIR trade
• support for international alliances, treaties and participation in cooperative efforts to find peaceful solutions to international disputes.

I still hope this “progressive” tradition is alive and well in America and that it will begin to infuse our political institutions.

Merle