The Politics of Downward Bound

This apparently is going to be the familiar theme for the near future: self-destructive governing based on psychotic politics, in a decadent political system out of touch with reality.

First example of the day: Congress is not renewing unemployment benefits, which apart from the unforgivable cruelty in such a wealthy nation, and with excess dripping from the favored few, will take billions out of the economy and wound economic recovery, which will in turn lead to less tax money and higher government deficits--and deficits are apparently all that Washington wants to talk about.

Oh--except for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, a major contributor to the federal deficit and the easiest to remedy. But the politics of that now favor their retention, which will be a further drag on the economy and the deficit.

Two things are happening politically: first, President Obama is being isolated by growing polarization to his left and right. It is reflected in some polls, but the true power of it is that both sides are professional politicians, and politics in this country is now primarily if not exclusively about raising money, which requires raising temperatures.

Second, the politics of the moment make so little sense that something else is going on, something deep in the American psyche. As Gov. Strictland of Ohio said, that there is not enough public support against ending the Bush tax cuts for the most wealthy boggles the mind. There's something--or several somethings--going on.

This is what we're watching, and in my case, more silently than usual in this space, as I turn my attention to other realms where dreaming up has more of a function for the future, as well as the present.

The Other Crisis

It's not just the Climate Crisis that threatens the near future. It's the economic, political and social consequences of the growing divide between the supremely rich and the rest. The rich have been getting richer and everyone else poorer since the Reagan 80s. Though Clinton policies and a booming economy temporarily boosted the middle class, thanks to GB Bush policies and now the lingering effects of the Great Recession--mostly felt by the non supremely rich--the divide is getting way out of hand.

But Bob Herbert's recent column says it better than I can:

Recessions are for the little people, not for the corporate chiefs and the titans of Wall Street who are at the heart of the American aristocracy. They have waged economic warfare against everybody else and are winning big time...

The ranks of the poor may be swelling and families forced out of their foreclosed homes may be enduring a nightmarish holiday season, but American companies have just experienced their most profitable quarter ever. As The Times reported this week, U.S. firms earned profits at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion in the third quarter — the highest total since the government began keeping track more than six decades ago.

The corporate fat cats are becoming alarmingly rotund. Their profits have surged over the past seven quarters at a pace that is among the fastest ever seen, and they can barely contain their glee."

Herbert outlines how self-destructive this is economically, but moves on to the social consequences:

"Beyond that, extreme economic inequality is a recipe for social instability. Families on the wrong side of the divide find themselves under increasing pressure to just hold things together: to find the money to pay rent or the mortgage, to fend off bill collectors, to cope with illness and emergencies, and deal with the daily doses of extreme anxiety.

Societal conflicts metastasize as resentments fester and scapegoats are sought. Demagogues inevitably emerge to feast on the poisonous stew of such an environment."

Herbert suggests that those who don't think this resentment can build should remember the 1930s. But that may be the wrong model. In the 30s, as earlier in the 20th century, it was politically potent to go after Big Business, Wall Street and the Trusts for their imperious wrecking of the economy and society. But after generations of equating such criticism with Communism, and deification of "private enterprise" as the solution for everything, it's politically tougher to aim at the supremely rich corporations so cleanly.

Instead that resentment gets translated the way corporate power prefers: the anxious white middle class scapegoats those below them (actually or traditionally) in the social order: other races and immigrants. So racism is on the rise, translated into anti-Obama fervor and such cultural expressions as the recent Dancing with the Stars debacle, in which voting Tea Partiers chose a talent-challenged Bristol Palin over the clearly more accomplished uppitedly black woman.

The black man in the White House also inflames anti-government rhetoric, thus depriving the middle class of its only institutional protection against predatory corporate power. Republicans gained power by refusing to be a governing partner, a virtually unprecedented act of unpatriotic selfishness. The combination does violence to social cohesion, the kind that is necessary in times of emergency.

Meanwhile, the governing ruling class goes on as apparently clueless as ever. Herbert cites a dandy of an example--

A stark example of the potential for real conflict is being played out in New York City, where the multibillionaire mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has selected a glittering example of the American aristocracy to be the city’s schools chancellor. Cathleen Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, has a reputation as a crackerjack corporate executive but absolutely no background in education.

Ms. Black travels in the rarefied environs of the very rich. Her own children went to private boarding schools. She owns a penthouse on Park Avenue and a $4 million home in Southampton. She was able to loan a $47,600 Bulgari bracelet to a museum for an exhibit showing off the baubles of the city’s most successful women.

Ms. Black will be peering across an almost unbridgeable gap between her and the largely poor and working-class parents and students she will be expected to serve. Worse, Mr. Bloomberg, heralding Ms. Black as a “superstar manager,” has made it clear that because of budget shortfalls she will be focused on managing cutbacks to the school system. So here we have the billionaire and the millionaire telling the poor and the struggling — the little people — that they will just have to make do with less."

Making the point I just tried to make, Herbert adds his remedy:

Extreme inequality is already contributing mightily to political and other forms of polarization in the U.S. And it is a major force undermining the idea that as citizens we should try to face the nation’s problems, economic and otherwise, in a reasonably united fashion. When so many people are tumbling toward the bottom, the tendency is to fight among each other for increasingly scarce resources.

What’s really needed is for working Americans to form alliances and try, in a spirit of good will, to work out equitable solutions to the myriad problems facing so many ordinary individuals and families. Strong leaders are needed to develop such alliances and fight back against the forces that nearly destroyed the economy and have left working Americans in the lurch."

Black Friday

Santa Claus' sleigh these days takes the form of this huge ship, commissioned by Wal-Mart and built in Denmark specifically and only to haul goodies from China to the U.S. It takes just 13 people to run it, even though it's longer than a U.S. aircraft carrier. This ship is so big that it had to be built in five separate sections that were welded together. The command bridge alone is higher than a 10-story building. The ship has its own cargo crane rigs--11 of them--that operating simultaneously can unload the entire ship in under two hours. So this is where Christmas comes from, where Black Friday lives. Typically, cargo ships from China that bring consumer goods to California ports, return with cardboard and material for recycling--in other words, garbage. But these ships reputedly return completely empty. [Thanks to Bill T. for sending me these photos etc. awhile back.]

Gratitude 2010

In a personal way and in conventional terms, I have much to be grateful for this year. The family members I've just visited in PA are healthy and reasonably secure, as are Margaret and I.

In the larger sense, the difference between last Thanksgiving and this is that I no longer believe that anything will or perhaps even can prevent major calamities in the near future--within a half century. Partly this is because I now accept that effects already in the works from global heating will be very serious, and society is clearly not prepared for them. Nor does our country in particular seem likely to be up to the challenge of preventing worse consequences, or dealing effectively with the consequences to come relatively soon. So to me the future looks different than it did just a year ago.

I've been dipping into a 1992 collection of pieces by John Leonard, surely the most brilliant, incisive and comprehensive American cultural critic of the past half century, titled The Last Innocent White Man in America (which refers not to himself but to Kurt Vonnegut.) Leonard looked at political and societal events from the perspectives--the wisdom--gleaned from literature. Just sampling some of the pieces from the 80s and early 90s made me realize that things haven't changed much, not since Reagan in the 1980s, and in larger currents, not since industrialism or capitalism or even the rise of what we call civilization, which was always based on war,exploitation and racism, if not outright slavery. In particular, American racism, xenophobia, and the war of the super rich on everyone else, with the side effects of extremism justified by religion and the pursuit of ignorance that all seem to be reaching new heights, were all visible in this familiar form and growing in the 1980s.

We needed to improve faster, and we haven't. In particular, our last chance to deal with global heating without catastrophic consequences that at least equal World War II and could well be much worse and more pervasive, was probably the late 1970s or early 1980s. So though the jury is out on whether the human species has flunked evolution, it seems very likely that what we call human civilization has.

I suppose in some selfish sense I am grateful that I won't live long enough to see the worst of what will happen, although no one knows what one's personal fate may be. But while I'm here I also hope to convey to the next generations what I believe they need to know, and need to be, to meet the challenges of that future.

Part of what I hope to convey is gratitude. Some of that is in the vein of the essay by Joanna Macy that I've quoted here every Thanksgiving for the past several years. But some is different, or more specific.

The best gratitude is absolute, but some of it is based on comparison. The worst kind of gratitude is being grateful for having what others don't have, which leads to all kinds of mischief. But imagining what one might not have can be a useful and enlightening comparison. The key word here is "imagining." Using imagination is the key.

But often what is imagined is based in experience, is an extrapolation. In winters when I was growing up, our water pipes would occasionally freeze, and we would be without running water for days. Where I live now, storms or other accidents have blacked out electrical power, sometimes for a week or more. There have been circumstances in my life when I've had little food or money. When I've been thirsty and without water. When I had no place to sleep. All of these are educational experiences. We assume so much. But our most basic resources are very fragile.

So at my age, I am grateful every day when after a certain amount of groaning, my muscles work pretty smoothly and without pain. But also just about every day I am consciously grateful for hot running water. Those basics of food, clothing, shelter, energy and infrastructure and the relative ease with which we obtain them are increasingly precarious. Learning this, and then learning what this prospect and those situations may mean in terms of personal character--of qualities of soul-- as well as action in the world, are going to be more and more necessary in the future. A future that can begin being the present at any moment.

So also, gratitude for the moment. For the laughter and affection of Oliva (age 5) and Persephone (age 3.) For all my family, and all my relations. For the hummingbirds that hang out near our feeders, now that all the flowers have gone. For Glenn Gould on YouTube. For Inka Dinka Do. For the good heartedness behind the crazy cultural melange called Thanksgiving in America.

From This Modern World, where there's information on Tom Tomorrow's gift collection for adults and a book for children. Tell him Captain Future sent you. (Though I'm not suggesting you ignore the new Doonesbury book. Just sayin.)

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future."
John F. Kennedy

To Grandmother's House We Scan

Having just flown back and forth across the U.S., I'm marvelling at the ongoing flyers revolt, which is attracting a lot of attention as a record number of people take to the airways for Thanksgiving weekend.

Up until now it's seemed that people were so intimidated by the spectre of terrorism that they were willing to undergo the absurd humiliations that pass for security checks at airports. On this trip I noticed how normal it has become to be sorting through buckets of your possessions while holding up your pants and walking in your socks, then finding somewhere to reassemble it all, get your belt back on and your shoes back on your feet. In both directions on my trip, it went very smoothly.

There was less hoohaw about the disposition of your mouthwash and nail clippers than last time--partly because we're all used to the rules, whether they make sense or not. We know now that we're expected to pay a premium for bottled water past the check point, because we're not allowed to bring any in. On this trip, both flyers and security people dealt with everything pretty calmly and efficiently.

But it seems that the new full body scanners being installed in airports everywhere are a bridge too far for the flying public. (They weren't operational in Arcata or Pittsburgh, the two airports where I went through security.) There are fears about radiation, not mollified at all by official pronouncements of their safety (which is what government authorities always say. Once upon a time, they said nuclear fallout is good for you.) There seems to be a special aversion to how much the scanners are reputed to show.

The only alternative that the Transportation Safety Administration offers is the full body pat down, which is just as repulsive to the people who are in revolt on the scanners. The buzz has been intense--protests have succeeded in getting pat downs forbidden for children, but there's controversy about gender and sex--security men aren't supposed to be patting down women, but what if they're gay? Once the match is lit in the age of texting and Twitter, these matters become a raging fire.

The first protests I saw covered were from pilots, who were angry about the rigid, incompetent and idiotic application of meaningless rules--which is hardly new to the situation (witness the notorious problems with the No Fly lists.) Later they expressed concerned at being repeatedly scanned and exposed to cumulative levels of radiation.

Then protests from both frequent and infrequent flyers quickly became organized, and got the attention of the travel industry, which quickly met with government officials. Some changes were made, some comforting noises issued from Homeland Security and the White House, but the scanners are going forward, and the Thanksgiving flyers are about to take to the air like turkeys. Stay tuned.

Heroes of the Future

Mark Twain to the 19th and early 20th centuries, Kurt Vonnegut to the 20th and early 21st--so many connections and similarities, and now suddenly they're both back in the news: Twain for an unaccountably popular and long-delayed memoir, and Vonnegut for the opening of a museum dedicated to him and his work. Despite the ironies embedded in these stories, these are still two causes for celebration, for two heroes of the future.

Burghers

A statue in Schenley Plaza in Pittsburgh representing the balance of nature. I took this on Friday, my one day in the city. Most of the time I've been involved with family and friends east of the city, including awedding and--tonight--a birthday party for my grand-niece Olivia. So far it's been a great trip. Homeward bound on Thursday early.

The Pema Update

As she gets a little older, Pema seems to be embracing her namesake (the Buddhist nun Pema Chodron) as she becomes more still and meditative. She spends a lot of her time in the yard just sitting in one place, observing. She still runs around in the house, and she can still move very fast outside, but these are more characteristic poses. Even our neighbor remarked on it--how pretty she was, sitting still in the sun-- and he doesn't even like cats.

Lately Pema has rediscovered my lap during the video hour--there was a period when she reverted to being alarmed by noises on the TV and literally jumpy, but lately she's been more mellow about sudden swells of music or random gunfire from that location. She moves up my chest and curls up, purrs and even falls asleep. But when Margaret was away for the weekend, visiting her daughter (and grandson-to-be), Pema wouldn't do this. She sat next to me on the couch and rubbed against me, but wouldn't commit to the lap. As soon as Margaret came home, she resumed. Now I'm going away for a week, to my niece's wedding and other visits in western PA, so her routine will be challenged again. Like a lot of cats she's into routines, and now she seems able to slide into alternate ones if familiar situations recur--that one of us is away for awhile. But she's not entirely happy about it.

If you're interested in the earlier history of Pema--a feral cat rescued from starvation--follow this link. And here.

The News

Here's the good news: as far as we know, the Earth did not get swallowed up by a black hole. Some people thought that might happen when they turned on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, but it didn't. At least, not that we noticed.

But the outcome of the 2010 elections made it less likely that we're going to make an orderly transition to a safe future, let alone a better one. It wasn't likely anyway, but bad times that most Americans can't even imagine are likely to become obvious sooner, and the far future has really taken a blow.

I remind you of what Paul Krugman wrote about the short-term future: "This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness. "

A battle royal is ahead for the long-term future. Yesterday President Obama reiterated what he's said in interviews, that his emphasis for the next two years is on clean energy policy, which is the positive way of talking about efforts to control the Climate Crisis. But the GOP--the Grand Oil Party--has moved to unanimity on Climate Crisis denial, becoming the party of anticipatory mass murder. Writes Marc Ambinder (with my emphasis): "The GOP plans to hold high profile hearings examining the alleged "scientific fraud" behind global warming, a sleeper issue in this election that motivated the base quite a bit." (The rest of his analysis in that column sounds pretty sane as well.)

I find myself becoming less interested in the shifting winds of politics and more concentrated on both the longer view, and the much more specific. In terms of the longer view, some of us had the hope that the improvements and stability in our lifetime meant that humanity had become mature and smart enough to move into a brighter future for all, including the ability to meet challenges like global heating we might encounter along the way. Certainly a better test for human maturity could not be devised than the Climate Crisis, which requires intelligent analysis, emotional and psychological maturity, anticipatory thinking and imagination, high levels of skills and confidence, and a society that welcomes diversity and has outgrown petty divisions.

But another reading of these decades is that they were a fortunate but temporary aberration: a product of several kinds of luck (America's position after World War II vs. the rest of the world, an unusually beneficent climate period, etc.) These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive--in fact, this period of luck and relative stability, when so many scourges of disease, war and poverty were in abeyance for millions of people was the perfect opportunity to marshal our physical, intellectual and psychological resources to really grow up as a species spread everywhere in a global society, capable of managing our collective future.

That no longer seems at all likely. There was progress in some parts of the world, but not enough, and especially not enough here in the U.S. The consequences of the past and our inability to deal with them in the present (most notably, in the Climate Crisis caused by byproducts of industrial prosperity) are very likely to cause significant hardships and disruptions, already a reality for millions across the globe, as well as unheard and unknown numbers even in America. This is almost inevitably going to grow significantly worse in the next 50 years, and beyond.

The refusal to face this reality will be painful to watch now. Those who continue the daily struggle against it will need renewed courage, tempered by hard-won wisdom. But once again they will be fighting to keep our society and our country from slipping back even farther. We still haven't made up the ground lost in the Bush II years--not even the Reagan years. If Obama's election was a step forward, this election was at least a half step back. And when we need to move forward quickly, that may turn out to be too much.

And those divisions are clearly still there. Racism was a significant factor in this election, along with oil and tobacco money. It may be a Sunset Effect, but after sunset comes night. Actually this may have been the last hurrah for the Grand Old White People's Supremacy Party. Demographics will out eventually. But the cohesive society we need in emergencies, with some level of trust in times of chaos, has grown even more remote, and some or all of us may well pay a price for that.

I find myself thinking about how completely many people are locked in the present as they know it, as if it will last forever. It's probably not going to. This thought, maybe paradoxically, orients me towards appreciating the moment. I think about hot water gushing out of the tap. I enjoy my cat while we have her. I still imagine the future, but its rewards are different than I used to imagine. It's a different and more dangerous kind of adventure. Maybe I can still suggest ways to meet it, for people who will have to face it. I probably won't be one of them. I've got a different and shorter journey to make. Meanwhile, I'm just hoping the hot water holds out.

The New Speaker of the House

Today is Election Day: Guard the Change

"Tomorrow [meaning TODAY], you can help determine not just the outcome of this election, but our country's future."

(President Obama, in an email yesterday)

"The last election was a changing of the guard. Now we need to guard the change."

(President Obama, speech this fall)

Don't compare us to the Almighty; compare us to the alternative."

(President Obama, speech in September)

And for a scenario of the outcome that is still possible, there's this from Nate Silver.

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

These are some of the Rabid Right extremists who have a good chance to be elected and to take power in the U.S. House and perhaps the Senate this week, plus two of their key facilitators. Here is some of what they've been saying: Social Security is evil, unconstitutional and must be abolished. End the minimum wage. End student loans, abolish the Education Department and abolish public schools. End the Veteran's administration. No separation of church and state--Christianity as the official religion, Islam is a terrorist religion. No right to vote for U.S. Senators. No legal abortions for any reason. Repeal health care reform, repeal consumer protection and Wall Street bank reform. Continue to subsidize corporations moving jobs out of America. Continue tax cuts for the super-rich. Keith Olbermann calls this election "an attempted use of democracy to end this democracy, to buy America wholesale and pave over the freedoms and the care we take of one another which have combined to keep us the envy of the world."

Paul Krugman wrote: "This is going to be terrible. In fact, future historians will probably look back at the 2010 election as a catastrophe for America, one that condemned the nation to years of political chaos and economic weakness."

And these candidates unanimously agree: Global warming, the greatest threat to the future, is a hoax.

Be afraid, be very afraid. This year, Halloween is real.

The Monsters Conquest

The monstrous amounts of money being spent on this election--dwarfing even the many millions that here in CA the two superwealthy candidates have lavished on their campaigns--comes secretly from corporations that--at least at this point--would not pour millions into purveying simplistic lies on behalf of candidates whose strings they expect to pull, unless they could do it in secret. Which for the first election in recent history, they can. We may never know to what extent the expected outcome of the 2010 has been bought by this secret money, but we can sure guess.

Who are these people? The kind of people (or, as the sign at yesterday's Washington rally points out, legally "corporations are people too") that deny the Climate Crisis for the same cynical reason they denied that smoking kills (often employing the same tactics and p.r. firms to do so), that continue to squeeze out the American middle class and yet convince enough members of it that it's the fault of blacks and browns and the federal government, that cynically take the resources of the country for free while running candidates against these programs, that demand their own taxes be cut so their billions can become more billions.

It's all got a living metaphor in this Halloween horror story, a book called The Monster by Michael W. Hudson (Times Books.) The apparent conventional wisdom about the sub-prime mortgage crisis that plunged the U.S. into a near Depression is that it was banks giving in to the bad choices made by people who really had no business wanting those loans. In other words: shame the victims.

The reality Michael Hudson exposes is very different: a morally corrupt and systematic campaign of predation, with no conscience and an excess of greed, by a sociopathic financial system--not at the fringes but in its vital centers. The victims are most often lied to and subjected to relentless psychological warfare, the records falsified and legal obligations of the lenders are circumvented. That the book begins with a primitive act of forgery is the signature of what goes on for the rest of its pages.

It is this streak within American business, politics and American life that is being empowered now. That is empowering itself through the cynical and ruthless manipulation of the unfortunately willing, as well as the helpless. We are watching our monsters become bigger and more powerful. This is a really scary Halloween.

Not Insane

Back in 1972, satirists the Firesign Theatre ran a presidential candidate named George Papoon whose slogan was "Not Insane." On Saturday satirists John Stewart and Steven Colbert filled the Mall in Washington with a rally to Restore Sanity. I'm not quite sure what that says about the march of American history, but Mary Elizabeth Williams at Salon had impressions of the day leading to some beautiful and hopeful words, some of which I will now steal:

"What this crazy, not entirely well-thought out, quasi-free-for-all was about, it turns out, was we, the people. The proud, generous, spirited, non-yelling and non-bullying real Americans who know that "If we amplify everything we hear nothing." Having 4Troops perform the national anthem and Tony Bennet belt out "America, the Beautiful" was not irony. Even Father Guido's rambling benediction that ended with a "Thank you, and we really mean it," was sincere. Because the ultimate metaphor for who we are, in the competent words of Stewart, is our nightmarishly daily, eminently Yankee commute. The NRA members and the Obama voters. The soccer moms and the immigrants. And somehow we all generally merge into one harmonious lane. It's true that as Stewart explained, "Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn't the promised land. It's just New Jersey." But when we practice compassion and community, when we remember that the loudmouths are not a true picture of who we are, we can heal a nation, fly to the moon, and even get to work on time.

Was Saturday the beginning of a new dawn in the American character? Did it cure hysteria, paranoia and rampant jerkwaddery? Only time will tell, but don't hold your breath. .. But when Mavis Staples and the entire ensemble gathered for the finale to promise "I'll Take You There," it seemed, at least for a minute, something more. It was a message to the world that we are not the sum of our loudest, angriest parts. That most of our hearts, broken and aching and cynical and flawed though they often are, are in the right place. Oh, mercy. Mercy indeed. And though the rally may be over, the Peace Crazy Love Train is still at the station. The only question left is: Are you on board?"

Not that anybody noticed or cares but...

Bloomburg reported that:

Applications for U.S. unemployment benefits unexpectedly fell last week to the lowest level in three months, a signal the labor market may be starting to mend.

Initial jobless claims decreased by 21,000 to 434,000 in the week ended Oct. 23, the lowest since early July when fewer auto plants than normal closed for retooling, Labor Department figures showed today in Washington. The total number of people receiving unemployment insurance dropped to a two-year low, while those getting extended payments also fell.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, is beginning to gain speed and may give companies reason to increase payrolls heading into the holiday shopping season. Ford Motor Co. is among companies planning to add staff as sales improve. "

But of course such realities can't possibly matter, or even be heard, when Bloomberg can also report:

The Obama administration cut taxes for middle-class Americans, expects to make a profit on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent to rescue Wall Street banks and has overseen an economy that has grown for the past five quarters.

Most voters don’t believe it.

A Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 24-26 finds that by a two-to-one margin, likely voters in the Nov. 2 midterm elections think taxes have gone up, the economy has shrunk, and the billions lent to banks as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program won’t be recovered."

A Real Halloween Scare

This 14 minute portion of Keith Olbermann's Special Comment is nothing but a recitation of the on the record statements and activities of various Tea Party candidates for Congress and the Senate. If you want to be truly scared for Halloween, watch it.

Emerson for the Day

"Democracy/Freedom has its root in the sacred truth that every man hath in him the divine Reason...though few men since the creation of the world live according to the dictates of Reason, yet all men are created capable of so doing. That is the equality and the only equality of all men."

Emerson
notebooks
painting by Georgia O'Keefe

But It's Getting There

How wise is the conventional wisdom? We're about to find out.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post had big stories yesterday on the depth and extent of voter anger. The Times conclusions, based on their polling, was the most devastating: parts of the Obama coalition are defecting, especially women:

The poll provides a pre-Election Day glimpse of a nation so politically disquieted and disappointed in its current trajectory that 57 percent of the registered voters surveyed said they were more willing to take a chance this year on a candidate with little previous political experience. More than a quarter of them said they were even willing to back a candidate who holds some views that “seem extreme.”

Individual polls suggested that apparent Democratic gains over last weekend had disappeared. Yet the tenor of coverage today is a little different. Several stories (in Salon, at TPM),
picked up by cable TV say that the expected Democratic losses are in line with recent history for midterm elections in a bad economy, and that Republicans would be even farther ahead if the Tea Party candidates weren't so awful.

Still, the outcome is yet uncertain--despite all the ads and robocalls, the election is still days away, and even if most have made up their minds by now, it all hinges on who goes to vote. Several polls that either make sure to nab cell phone users or include statistics on cell phone v. land line calls show that cell phone users (presumably younger voters) would vote Democratic in larger numbers--enough to make close winners out of the many close races on the boards. The question is whether they will vote.

Americans have a choice: to take out their anger and confusion on all incumbents or the majority party, or to avoid making things worse. Americans never seem to foresee just how much worse their impulsive choices can make things. Bush v. Gore remains the most vivid example.

It's worth remembering that Republican anger isn't new. Rabid right GOPers were angry when Bush was in the White House. (One poll shows that 96% of Tea Partiers voted for McCain.) What is new is the primitive extremism of many of the candidates, from muddled theocrats like Sharron Angle to the out and out thugs supporting Rand Paul.

It may be our normal politics of two-steps-forward, one-and-a-half steps back (or two-and-a-half), but even that's not good enough. As it is, we're probably not making enough progress towards what we need to give us a fighting chance for an intact future. But this kind of an outcome, and the ensuing cacophony of idiocy we're in for, makes that possibility even more remote.

Well, it's not dark yet...

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"The man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there is no eye."

Thomas Carlyle

Election 2010: Guard the Change

The following is a bit of encouragement I'm posting on various political blogs today. I don't post there very often anymore, but I thought I'd add my voice now and hope that it helps.

It's the last week before the elections. It's the moment when potential voters are most focused. It's the time to nail down organizing for GOTV and get it started, especially in early voting states.

It's the time for action. And if you need a few words to keep you going, I suggest these: Guard the Change.

Because when you strip away the side issues, that's what this election is about.

President Obama said it in September: "The last election was a changing of the guard. Now we need to guard the change."

Part of the electorate is discouraged that the change isn't faster. Part of the electorate is going to scapegoat the President and blame the party in power for bad economic times. But the energy on the GOPer side is coming primarily from those who are afraid of change.

They are mostly white people who are feeling overrun by demographic change. They are afraid of Mexican immigrants and Muslims. They see President Obama as the leader who is taking away everything from whites and giving it to blacks and browns. They want their country back.

These voters are being managed with complete cyncism by corporate interests and their millions, who must hide themselves to retain credibility. They really want their country back.

This energy is coming also from people who see liberals as lording over their lives, anxious to take away the last of what they have--their SUVs, their big screen TVs--with the excuse of global warming.

The importance of the change underway can be measured by the extremism of the opposition. Many of the GOPer candidates don't even pretend to know very much, or base their actions on anything more than discredited ideologies and narrow religious faiths.

We know the political change that has begun will benefit everyone in this time of inevitable stresses, and especially that it is crucial to a decent future.

It's time to guard the change.

Some voters can still be persuaded, because many extremist zealots running for the House haven't been sufficiently exposed for what they are. I suspect most voters would prefer that the people they elect to be the government are competent.

But the most important task is to get Obama voters of 2008 to vote in 2010. This message is particularly potent for them: Guard the change.

What GOPers fear most is that black voters, Latino voters and young voters who believed in Obama will rally to his defense, to guard the change he began. That's why they are busily engaged in the voter intimidation tactics for which they are so justly infamous.

Change is hard. Political change is messy and often ugly. President Obama at USC:

"But I told you this was going to be hard. Power concedes nothing without a fight.

Inch by inch, day by day, week by week, we’ve been grinding it out. That’s the nature of change in a big complex democracy. And it seem so distant from those wonderful times [of 2008 and the Inaugural.] We haven’t gotten everything that we hoped for. Maybe a neighbor is out of a job, but don’t let anyone tell you that our fight hasn’t been worth it, or that we’re not making a difference.

Because of you, there are people right here in CA who don’t have to choose between cancer treatment or going bankrupt. There are women who can look their children in the eye and say, yes you are going to college. Businesses able to keep their doors open during a recession. 100,000 brave men and women home from Iraq. We will continue to fight to end Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. We will have an energy policy for the future of America.

So don’t let them tell you that change isn’t possible. Here’s what I know. Change is always hard. And if your parents, if our gradparents, if our great-grandparents had listened to the cynics, we wouldn’t be here today."

This election is important, if only for this one reason:

Guard the change.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"I believe in original sin. I also believe in original virtue. Look around!"

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Timequake

Election 2010: Fearing Forecasts

It's the home stretch for the 2010 elections, with a flood of final polls and forecasts ahead. One veteran forecaster at Kos writes of this election, "I don't have a freaking clue." Neither apparently does the superstar of evaluating polls, Nate Silver (now working for the New York Times.)

One fascinating reason is this (according to the above cited post): early polling was largely coming from Republican or Republican-leaning sources. Even now nearly half comes from such sources, while less than 10% comes from Democratic sources.

This could be why the polls haven't made much sense. There simply aren't that many Republicans--or Tea Partiers--to account for the percentages. But the outcome will depend on what it always was going to depend on: Obama Democrats showing up to vote, and enough Independents who aren't convinced by extremist zealots with nothing but push-mouth slogans and fantasy ideology to guide them in the important, complex and difficult tasks of governing.

Election 2010: To Turn the Tide

President Obama spoke at USC in LA before an audience that university officials estimated at 37,500. There was also a stop in Las Vegas, before a crowd of 9,000. All across the country Democratic candidates for the Senate, Congress and governorships are gaining support, closing gaps in polls or moving farther ahead--often just after Obama has spoken in the state. Meanwhile, the Newsweek poll says that Obama's approval rating has jumped from 48% to 54%. Democrats have higher approval, and according to Newsweek the "enthusiasm gap" has disappeared.

Republicans and their shadow billionaires and corporate sponsors are recognizing some of this. They concentrated some $40 million in Nevada to defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but now must send millions to Pennsylvania, where Joe Sestak is gaining momentum for the Senate.

But so far the media has not recognized this. Though political pros were telling them on Friday that the Democratic message is getting through--that the GOPer extremists threaten Social Security, tax relief for the middle class, student loans, Wall Street and credit card reform, health care reform and the federal budget itself, and that their candidates are being financed by millions from unknown donors. But the pundits weren't getting it. As diarist Freestatedem noted at Kos, there is little or no national TV coverage of President Obama's speeches and appearances, even though they are shaping up to quite possibly be a political phenomenon.

As I've noted recently, the GOPer media bias may be "a combination of 'what sells papers' emphasis on conflict and novelty, and their corporate interests." Now half of this is going to be tested, because the most natural way the media would go now would be to tire of the "GOPer tidal wave" mantra they've been pushing--it's old news now--and go for the novelty, the reversal of fortune. If Obama and the Democrats are coming on strong, then that's the news. Will this be their new angle? Or will they stick with pushing the no-longer-novel Sharron Angle and her fellow extremist zealots? Angle in particular is feeding the families of many a media person in Nevada with her advertising barrage. Is there any integrity left in news? We're about to find out.

And Now for Something Completely Different

All those great Obama songs helped make 2008 a lot of fun as well as inspiring. This is probably not in their league, but it's funny and fun. The song is "I Like Jerry Brown," concerning the governor's race in California.

Election 2010: Of Tea Parties and Kings

Yet another story details the reasons that Barack Obama has had the most impressive first two years as President in modern times--this one in Rolling Stone, summarized here at Daily Kos. And so the question recurs: why is this news to people? Why isn't he getting the credit? Why do people even believe the contrary of what's true: for example, that he's raised their taxes, when in fact he's lowered them?

There are a lot of complaints about "messaging," and that's part of it. So is the dominant media narrative, which somehow always seems to track with GOPerness, which I take to be a combination of "what sells papers" emphasis on conflict and novelty, and their corporate interests.

But there's something else, something more fundamental, at least in terms of the national psyche. It has to do with Kings.

It may be, as someone said, that humanity's greatest invention is the sentence. But quite possibly its most harmful invention was the King. Human beings lived for thousands of years without kings--but I suppose as populations increased and small groups merged into big ones, and organized warfare became more organized and more deadly, the emergence of the King was a reasonable if fatal step.

Despite the rewriting of prehistory, I suspect that the concept of the King emerged at more or less the same time as the concept of the single god. Which came first may not matter, for they each seem to depend on--and reflect--the other.

In any case, the King became the single ruler, the absolute power, who was directly connected to both the god above and responsible for everything that happened in the kingdom. So when things went well, it was the King's glory. And when things went bad, it was the King's fault.

At first (the story goes) the King's subjects took this pretty literally, so if the King failed, the King was killed. But this got changed, so that the King was symbolically killed, at first through killing a substitute person--a mental and/or physical defective, a fool--and then through killing a substitute animal, like a goat. Like a goat that lets the King escape his fate. The scapegoat.

These days we have Presidents, and though they have a lot of limitations on their governing, they remain the symbol of power. Sometimes what happens is mostly or somewhat their fault, and sometimes it's not at all. But it doesn't matter. They are Presidents of projection. When things go wrong, they become the scapegoat.

This is a powerful tendency, though there are others associated with the King. The King is a symbol of the nation, especially when it is at war. So people do rally around the King, the President, when war is front and center. It probably underlies why G.W. Bush got a second term.

But today there's the sick economy. People feel helpless about it, and need to punish someone, and that's often enough the President. Probably some of those people are going to vote GOPer, though I think mostly they will be among those who don't vote. Frankly, I don't think this is as big a political problem for Obama as some--it's more to do with the party in power--but it is a problem for Dems.

More important though is President Obama as the scapegoat for change. There are a lot of people who are afraid of change. White people mostly. They're afraid of change that at this point is mostly a product of demographics, and in some respects is inevitable. But that doesn't matter. They see the first black President, and they want their country back. "Liberal" to them means "favors blacks and mostly brown foreigners over whites."

Now, Washington liberals, government bureaucrats, self-serving progressives--they (and we) all bear some responsibility for the suffering of others. But much of the truly awful change that is affecting their lives is the product of GOPer policies of the past decade, and the policies of American and multinational corporations and banks. But there's this convenient scapegoat, the black man in the White House.

This is the Tea Party in a nutshell. This is why, as Rachel Maddow pointed out this week, we have the largest number of extremist zealots ever to be running for high office, and in a midterm election, they have a better chance to get the relative fewer numbers of votes they need.

Right now the smart money is some of them making it to the Senate, and a lot of them making it to the House. But things are trending away from them, the polls are shaky, there are numbers that contradict the supposed trends (like the declining viewership for Fox News.)

I think what the Tea Party and the GOPer establishment fears the most is that black voters understand who is being scapegoated, and rise to the voting booths to protect him. To guard the change. The GOPers are already organizing their voter intimidation efforts, for which they are so justly infamous.

The move of so-called Independents away from extremist zealots is a good trend, but the conventional wisdom on that also is that House candidates aren't as exposed as Senate candidates to any kind of scrutiny, so they may get away with hiding their agenda--and lack of basic qualifications, like knowing anything--behind the usual rhetoric. But Dem prospects depend on mobilizing young voters, Latinos and other minorities, and black voters, as Obama did in 2008. The polls underestimated them, too, remember.

The President is inevitably a symbol, and people project their hopes as well as their fears, both irrationally to some degree. Irrational hopes not yet entirely fulfilled may lead to disappointment. Irrational fears are easy to have confirmed these days, with Fox running wild and other more temperate authorities eroded. But Obama is not the King, he is the President. As the evidence shows, by real world historical and political standards, he's been a very good one. His ability to make progress that benefits all Americans, that benefits the world and above all the future, will be hampered by a GOPer majority House of Representatives, even apart from the circus of investigations that will ensue.

Early voting has begun in several states. Guard the change.

The Dreaming Up Daily Quote

"Literature is not about one's personal effort to push the pen on the page. Literature is all about heritage and futurity."

Bruce Sterling
Image: Mars

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama campaign together before a crowd of 35,000 in Ohio.

Election 2010: The "I" Word, Coming to a Congress Near You?

Here I am, doing exactly what I've accused other blogs of doing too much of: mentioning Christine O'Donnell. But her "I'm you" ad campaign rang a bell in my memory. Wasn't there some other dubious person trying to deflect bad publicity with that phrase: "I'm you?"

Yes, there was. Her name was Linda Tripp.

Linda Tripp was the woman who recorded phone conversations with Monica Lewinsky and passed them on to Ken Starr and his $70 million investigation that led so slowly to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

Up until then, one "scandal" after another proved to be little more than the inflated terms of attack by GOPer zealots. But Linda Tripp gave the torturous investigation new life. The public didn't respond to her well, though. Especially since it looked like she had used multiple deceits to make some money with a book deal. So she hired a PR agent and gave a little press conference, where she asked the question, Who am I? and answered it, "I'm you."

But my thoughts did not follow the path of comparing Linda Tripp to Christine O'Donnell. Instead they fixed on this period that Americans who lived through it have largely blanked from their minds. Months and months of accusations and attacks, culminating in a President being impeached for only the second time in history, on grounds that few constitutional scholars could reconcile with the charge of high crimes and misdemeanors, bearing on the office of the Presidency.

But the GOPers controlled Congress, and they did it, because they could. This--along with the federal government shutdowns--was in fact the Republican Revolution. Notice that at the time, the economy was in great shape, and Clinton was a popular President.

Now consider one more possible ramification of a GOPer majority in 2010, besides frustrating any progressive legislation, or anything and everything that President Obama backs, attempting to reverse, repeal and defund whatever hard-won progress that's been made while proposing to deform the constitution, promote official bigotry and ignore earth-shattering dangers. For some GOPers in high places have already promised government shutdowns--and lots of investigations.

Investigations, ending with what? The attempted impeachment of the first African American U.S. President? You say he isn't giving them the opening that Clinton did, with complicated business deals and personal misconduct. But do you think that really matters? That this would stop them? These folks who deny he was born where he was born, and that his religion is his religion? Many are running on claims that have no basis in fact whatever (Sharia law?). Because they can, and they have the money to make pernicious illusion into consequential reality.

The Obama administration could have pursued investigations and even prosecutions--including impeachment-- into multiple areas of the Bush administration, from politicizing judicial and other appointments, to ordering torture and starting a war by knowingly lying to Congress and the American people. But they didn't. The country was in a terrible economic crisis, brought on by Bush policies. The country was embroiled in complex wars, created and mishandled by the Bushcorpse. Obama put country first.

But immense threats to the future, including the current possibility of another economic crisis, won't stop the GOPers from their sociopathic approach to politics. To their less than subtle class war, they could very well add an open race war, as well as putting the world through another disgusting, depressing and immensely damaging political crisis.

Far-fetched? Is there a standard for that?

Guard the change.