Hear, and Understand, the Veterans Themselves: "Shotvarfet"

[An Addendum will now be found at the conclusion of this article.]

From a review of Jackson Lears's, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920:

The book’s title — a play on D. W. Griffith’s 1915 film “The Birth of a Nation” — suggests two of Lears’s greatest revisionist concerns: the lasting influence of Civil War violence and “the rising significance of race.” Beginning in the 1870s, he argues, Americans attempted to stitch their country back together around a “militarist fantasy” of Anglo-Saxon supremacy. Yet rather than bringing the hoped-for personal and national redemption, their efforts produced tragedy. According to Lears, the same cultural logic that justified lynching in the American South and the conquest of American Indians in the West eventually led to war in Cuba, the Philippines and Europe — and, a century later, to our own mess in Iraq.

Lears is hardly the first scholar to address these themes. But he is among the most far-reaching, seeking to redefine an era known for its reformist energies as a time when militarism and racism all too often triumphed over more pacific, democratic ideals. Like any good synthesis, “Rebirth of a Nation” dutifully covers the major trends of the age: the rise of industrial capitalism, the expansion of American empire, the tightening chokehold of Jim Crow. What brings new life to this material is the book’s emphasis on how Americans’ “inner lives” came to shape their outer worlds. Events that appear to be struggles for conquest and plunder turn out, in Lears’s view, to be animated by a personal search for meaning. “The rise of total war between the Civil War and World War I was rooted in longings for release from bourgeois normality into a realm of heroic struggle,” he writes. “This was the desperate anxiety, the yearning for rebirth, that lay behind official ideologies of romantic nationalism, imperial progress and civilizing mission — and that led to the trenches of the Western Front.”

...

Lears’s “poster boy” for this aggressive new masculinity is Teddy Roosevelt, whose blend of boosterism, progressivism and unabashed imperialism captured both its high ideals and serious dangers. Like so many reformers, Roosevelt sought to remake American society along more ­equitable and democratic lines. At the same time, he believed that Anglo-Saxon men possessed a God-given right to dominate the world. In both cases, Lears suggests, Roosevelt’s politics were the product of a profound internal struggle. “There must be control,” Roosevelt wrote in the 1890s. “There must be mastery, somewhere, and if there is no self-control and self-mastery, the control and the mastery will ultimately be imposed from without.” He was writing to Rudyard Kipling about the problem of governing “dark-hued” peoples, but he might as well have been writing about his own psyche.

On the same themes, see my essay, "Searching for Order, Meaning and Miracles, as the World Cracks Apart." That article discusses a number of related issues (and includes an examination of the grievous intellectual and moral crimes of Frank Rich), and it also offers several excerpts from the work of the indispensable Paul Fussell.

Here is the concluding passage of Lears's, Rebirth of a Nation:

In The Ghost Road, Pat Barker's great novel of World War I, the protagonist Billy Prior echoes Hemingway's Frederick Henry in asserting that after years of mass death, only the names of places had any meaning left: "Mons, Loos, the Somme, Arras, Verdun, Ypres." But then he looks around at the "linked shadows" of himself and his men and remembers "another group of words that still mean something. Little words that rip through sentences unregarded: us, them, we, they, here, there. These are the words of power, and long after we're gone, they'll lie about in the language, like the unexploded grenades in these fields, and any one of them'll take your hand off."

Prior dies in the last week of the Great War, but Barker has one unexploded grenade left. From the memoirs of the neurologist W.H.R. Rivers she fashions a scene of a soldier dying at Craiglockhart Hospital, an idealistic young officer named Hallett.

The whole left side of his face drooped. The exposed eye was sunk deep in his skull, open, though he didn't seem to be fully conscious. His hair had been shaved off, preparatory to whatever operation had left the horseshoe-shaped scar, now healing ironically well, above the suppurating wound left by the rifle bullet. The hernia cerebri pulsated, looking like some strange submarine form of life, the mouth of a sea anemone perhaps. The whole of the left side of the body was useless. Even when he was conscious enough to speak, the drooping of the mouth and the damage to the lower jaw made his speech impossible to follow. This, more than anything else, horrified his family. You saw them straining to understand, but they couldn't grasp a word he said. His voice came in a whisper because he lacked the strength to project it. He seemed to be whispering now.

"Shotvarfet," Hallett seems to say. "Shotvarfet." Finally Rivers realizes what he is saying: "It's not worth it." The cry spreads across the ward. "A buzz of protest not against the cry, but in support of it, a wordless murmur from damaged brains and drooping mouths. 'Shotvarfet, Shotvarfet.'" The cry goes on and on, until in the end the mangled words fade into silence, and Hallett dies.

This is another language of war, a language closer to ritual incantation than to reasoned discourse, not the sort of language you could use in political debate. Yet it has a political point. Amid the official language of war, then and now, it is worth recalling that darkened ward of broken men and their dark, insistent truth. They remind us that sometimes a pacifist stance is the least sentimental of all, the most thoroughly embedded in the viscera of experience.

Finally, here is an excerpt from Fussell's book, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War, offered in my essay, "Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards":

But for Sledge the worst of all was a week-long stay in rain-soaked foxholes on a muddy ridge facing the Japanese, a site strewn with decomposing corpses turning various colors, nauseating with the stench of death, "an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell's own cesspool." Because there were no latrines and because there was no moving in daylight, the men relieved themselves in their holes and flung the excrement out into the already foul mud. It was a latter-day Verdun, the Marine occupation of that ridge, where the artillery shellings uncovered scores of half-buried Marine and Japanese bodies, making the position "a stinking compost pile":

If a Marine slipped and slid down the back slope of the muddy ridge, he was apt to reach the bottom vomiting. I saw more than one man lose his footing and slip and slide all the way to the bottom only to stand up horror-stricken as he watched in disbelief while fat maggots tumbled out of his muddy dungaree pockets, cartridge belt, legging lacings, and the like....

We didn't talk about such things. They were too horrible and obscene even for hardened veterans. ... It is too preposterous to think that men could actually live and fight for days and nights on end under such terrible conditions and not be driven insane. ... To me the war was insanity.

And from the other side of the world the young British officer Neil McCallum issues a similar implicit warning against the self-delusive attempt to confer high moral meaning on these grievous struggles for survival. Far from rationalizing their actions as elements of a crusade, McCallum and his men, he says, "have ceased largely to think or believe at all":

Annihilation of the spirit. The game does not appear to be worth the candle. What is seen through the explosions is that this, no less than any other war, is not a moral war. Greek against Greek, against Persian, Roman against the world, cowboys against Indians, Catholics against Protestants, black men against white -- this is merely the current phase of an historical story. It is war, and to believe it is anything but a lot of people killing each other is to pretend it is something else, and to misread man's instinct to commit murder.

ADDENDUM: Perhaps I should include here the concluding paragraphs of my essay, "Against Annihilation of the Spirit: Let Us All Become Cowards":

So the myths prevail. Our wars are always noble, fought for the purest of motives. Our warriors are similarly noble, engaged in a high-minded crusade. They butcher and slaughter, and are butchered and slaughtered themselves, so that "civilization" might be preserved. Never mind that many of the warriors themselves would not agree. Never mind that the front-line soldiers know that war is insanity, and only insanity. Never mind the overwhelming, senseless, futile, endless horror of what actually happens in combat, and the details that never reach the public.

[Paddy] Chayefsky rejects the myths in their totality. He implores us to embrace cowardice. I beg you to follow his advice. You can be certain the cries for war will rise again, if not against Iran, then against North Korea, or in ten years' time against China, or against a country not now in the news, but which will fill the role required by the vast machinery of war. And when those cries overwhelm all facts and make reasonable argument impossible, and when they are amplified once again by an ever-compliant, always docile and obedient media, plead cowardice. If you value the sanctity of a single life, it is the only sane course to take, and the bravest.

An Extraordinary Man

In a recent post about the "health care reform" horror show, I offered this observation about almost all national politicians:

With very few exceptions, and the exceptions are so few in number that they cannot alter the general direction of events, these are corrupt individuals operating in a profoundly corrupt and infinitely corrupting system.

I employ phrases such as, "with a handful of exceptions," from time to time, to acknowledge the very small number of politicians in Washington who don't merely say they oppose the continuing and increasing oppressions of the corporatist system that has been slowly strangling us for over a century (most politicians say they oppose all that: it's like loving Mom and apple pie) -- but who consistently act against the depredations of corporatism to the extent they can.

Dennis Kucinich is one of those rare exceptions. In upcoming articles in the series I recently began, I will examine the vast chasm that separates what most Democrats, including most progressives, claim to care about so desperately, and what the evidence indicates they actually care about. Unsurprisingly, especially in view of the retreat of the Democrats and progressives from every goal for health reform that they themselves had established as benchmarks, their real goals are not what they announce to others. But then, behavior of this kind is everyday fare for politicians and those who service them. This is true not only of the United States and not only in our time, as any historical review would establish beyond question.

If progressives generally, including the online progressive community, were sincere about what they proclaim to be their goals, they would enthusiastically offer Kucinich the respect and admiration he has long deserved. They would express their gratitude for his continuing efforts on behalf of those aims they claim to share. For the most part, you will read and hear none of that. It was particularly noticeable during the last campaign, when progressives themselves sought to marginalize Kucinich entirely. The most effective means of doing so was simply to ignore him -- which is exactly what they did. When they mentioned Kucinich at all, it was almost always to mock and deride him. The progressives will tell you they were only being "realistic," for Kucinich had no chance to win. In this way, the progressives adopt the Democrats' all-purpose rationalization for indefensible compromise, and they reverse cause and effect: of course he had no chance to win, just as genuine health care reform didn't have a chance in hell (genuine from the progressives' perspective), so long as Democrats and progressives themselves absolutely refuse to lead.

They never demonstrate leadership, or integrity, or consistency, and they inevitably fail to achieve the goals they say are so dear to them. They then use each failure as proof of how difficult the battle is and how frighteningly powerful are the forces arrayed against them, and as a demonstration of why principled action would never have succeeded. They hope you won't remember that they never considered seriously fighting for what they claim to be their beliefs, or that they surrendered before the battle was joined. Since this is politics, very few people do remember; even fewer care. And so the empty, futile charade continues.

They also ignore Kucinich most of the time because of the reproach he represents. Kucinich is what genuine opposition looks like. In a world where lies are the common currency, Kucinich speaks the truth. Even worse, he means what he says and he acts on it. Thus, he voted against this abomination of a "health reform" bill.

This is not to say that I personally agree with all of Kucinich's policy positions. I don't. In terms of the issues I'm discussing, my agreement is completely irrelevant. Kucinich grants me the opportunity to feel admiration and gratitude. Our culture and our politics offer endless opportunities to feel near-terminal boredom in response to stultifying conformity of thought and expression and, at a very different point on the spectrum, horror at the immense, almost ungraspable cruelties that occur every day. The chance to experience meaningful admiration is extraordinarily rare; I treasure each such opportunity as I would a precious gem. I offer my sincere thanks to Mr. Kucinich for the unexpected gift.

This reminds me of a truly great American hero, Robert La Follette. I regularly recall La Follette here, for his story is deeply inspiring and it continues to hold many lessons for today. As I've said before, it is a measure of how far we have traveled from almost a century ago, and how far down, that very few people today know anything about this extraordinary man. I last wrote about La Follette in September 2008, in "A Time Bereft of Heroes." Both because many readers don't follow links and because I myself never tire of reading this, here is the opening of an article by John Nichols:

ON March 25, 1921, at the age of sixty-five, Robert M. La Follette Sr. took the greatest risk of his long political career. Four years after he chose to lead the Congressional opposition to World War I, La Follette was still condemned in Washington and in his native state of Wisconsin as a traitor or--at best--an old man whose political instincts had finally failed him. But La Follette was not ready to surrender the U.S. Senate seat he had held since leaving Wisconsin's governorship in 1906. He wanted to return to Washington to do battle once more against what he perceived to be the twin evils of the still young century: corporate monopoly at home and imperialism abroad.

The reelection campaign that loomed just a year off would be difficult, he was told, perhaps even impossible. Old alliances had been strained by La Follette's lonely refusal to join in the war cries of 1917 and 1918. To rebuild them, the Senator's aides warned, he would have to abandon his continued calls for investigations of war profiteers and his passionate defense of socialist Eugene Victor Debs and others who had been jailed in the postwar Red Scare.

The place to backpedal, La Follette was told, would be in a speech before the crowded Wisconsin Assembly chamber in Madison. Moments before the white-haired Senator climbed to the podium on that cold March day, he was warned one last time by his aides to deliver a moderate address, to apply balm to the still-open wounds of the previous years, and, above all, to avoid mention of the war and his opposition to it.

La Follette began his speech with the formalities of the day, acknowledging old supporters and recognizing that this was a pivotal moment for him politically. Then, suddenly, La Follette pounded the lectern. "I am going to be a candidate for reelection to the United States Senate," he declared, as the room shook with the thunder of a mighty orator reaching full force. Stretching a clenched fist into the air, La Follette bellowed: "I do not want the vote of a single citizen under any misapprehension of where I stand: I would not change my record on the war for that of any man, living or dead."

The crowd sat in stunned silence for a moment before erupting into thunderous applause. Even his critics could not resist the courage of the man; indeed, one of his bitterest foes stood at the back of the hall, with tears running down his cheeks, and told a reporter: "I hate the son of a bitch. But, my God, what guts he's got."

This was the La Follette that his friend Emma Goldman referred to lovingly as "the finest, most inconsistent anarchist" of his time. This was the man so fierce in his convictions that he would risk consignment to political oblivion rather than abandon an unpopular position. The antithesis of the elected officials whose compromises characterize our contemporary condition, La Follette genuinely believed that the inheritors of America's revolutionary tradition would, if given the truth, opt not for moderation but for the most radical of solutions.

Hate the son of a bitch if you must -- but recognize his greatness. Here is another lesson for those who say they oppose the crimes of our corporatist-authoritarian-militarist state but fail to do anything to stop them, even when they can: La Follette won reelection overwhelmingly.

It is a considerable jolt to return to our colorless, petty contemporary politics after feeling the heat and vitality of La Follette's courage. But we can look at Dennis Kucinich, who offers an illustration of the same principle on a lesser scale. Kucinich has written an explanation of his vote on the "health care" bill: "Why I Voted No." Here are some excerpts:

Clearly, the insurance companies are the problem, not the solution. They are driving up the cost of health care. Because their massive bureaucracy avoids paying bills so effectively, they force hospitals and doctors to hire their own bureaucracy to fight the insurance companies to avoid getting stuck with an unfair share of the bills. The result is that since 1970, the number of physicians has increased by less than 200% while the number of administrators has increased by 3000%. It is no wonder that 31 cents of every health care dollar goes to administrative costs, not toward providing care. Even those with insurance are at risk. The single biggest cause of bankruptcies in the U.S. is health insurance policies that do not cover you when you get sick.

But instead of working toward the elimination of for-profit insurance, H.R. 3962 would put the government in the role of accelerating the privatization of health care. In H.R. 3962, the government is requiring at least 21 million Americans to buy private health insurance from the very industry that causes costs to be so high, which will result in at least $70 billion in new annual revenue, much of which is coming from taxpayers. This inevitably will lead to even more costs, more subsidies, and higher profits for insurance companies—a bailout under a blue cross.

...

The “robust public option” which would have offered a modicum of competition to a monopolistic industry was whittled down from an initial potential enrollment of 129 million Americans to 6 million. An amendment which would have protected the rights of states to pursue single-payer health care was stripped from the bill at the request of the Administration. Looking ahead, we cringe at the prospect of even greater favors for insurance companies.

Recent rises in unemployment indicate a widening separation between the finance economy and the real economy. The finance economy considers the health of Wall Street, rising corporate profits, and banks’ hoarding of cash, much of it from taxpayers, as sign of an economic recovery. However in the real economy—in which most Americans live—the recession is not over. Rising unemployment, business failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures are still hammering Main Street.

Kucinich is fully correct on the central point, which is the nature and operation of our corporatist system. I recently described that system, and how it works with regard to health care, this way:

I point you again to Chris Floyd's wonderfully brief and entirely accurate summary of what is going on in the health care reform debate. It's no debate at all: whatever happens, certain already immensely powerful and wealthy corporations closely allied with the State will become still more powerful and wealthy. Given the nature of the corporatist system that now throttles every aspect of life in the U.S., that is how the system works. That's how it's set up, and that's its purpose. The fact that insurance companies will reap huge rewards on the backs of "ordinary" taxpaying Americans is not a regrettable byproduct of an allegedly good but imperfect effort at reform, or a flaw that will be fixed at some unspecified future date. And as already powerful and wealthy interests become more powerful and wealthy, the State will also increase its already massive power over all our lives still more. None of that is incidental: it's the point.

Dennis Kucinich would be rare in any field of human endeavor. In politics, an individual like Kucinich is almost unheard of: he is a principled man. Is he perfect? Of course not; none of us is. And he works in a thoroughly corrupt system, which means that not only his principles, but principles as such, are under assault every second of every day.

Given that, Kucinich's record is unusual in the extreme. His repeated willingness to act in accordance with his declared convictions is extraordinary. One further aspect of Kucinich's record demands mention: on the "health care" vote, as on Kucinich's consistent refusal to vote for funding for America's criminal and illegal wars and occupations, Kucinich is supremely right.

Very few people appreciate or even acknowledge the overwhelming significance of that fact, which is ultimately the most important fact of all. Those of us who do should highlight it at every opportunity -- and we should offer our grateful thanks.

Nauseating, Unforgivable and Potentially Lethal Racism

Here.

I refuse to publish the two words of that article's title on this blog. I provide the link so that those of you still capable of minimally rational, coherent and decent thought can see the depths to which many people eagerly descend.

I will observe that if one chooses to engage in this kind of demonization of huge groups of what are, in fact, individual human beings, individuals possessed of widely different convictions and exhibiting greatly variable behavior (as is true of all such broad designations), you might more profitably start with Christians. For much of human history, that is also where you can end. In that connection, I've written at length about the "apocalyptic crusader" psychology, one which has led to horrifying consequences in the foreign policy of the United States. Among my articles on that subject are: "The Apocalyptic Crusader: Redemption, Purification and a New World -- Through Sacred Violence and Death" and "The Apocalyptic Crusader, Continued: American Apocalypse."

In the column linked at the beginning of this post, there is the usual pretense of "even-handedness" and fairness, and the standard attempt to convince the reader that the author is merely being "objective." The writer seeks to assure us that he is proceeding with great care and with all due deliberation. But the fundamental dishonesty involved escapes the mask at a few points, as it almost always inevitably does. Note these sentences in particular: "How to address the threat posed by the fact that, of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst, there are a few (perhaps many more than a few) who are so radicalized that they would kill their fellow Americans?" Just how many more than "a few"? That sounds as if it might be a lot of Muslims. Are you scared yet? Are you even terrified? That's the purpose of this kind of formulation. If you're looking for a target to assuage your feelings of victimization and your terror, the writer has very thoughtfully provided one.

And consider this: "America differentiates itself on integration from Western European countries, which are far more cringing and guilt-driven in their approach. But can the American swagger persist if many Americans come genuinely to view Muslims as Fifth Columnists?" The sleight-of-hand here is deeply repellent, and I consider it close to impossible that it is not fully intentional. The author is arguing: "Now, I'm not saying Americans would be right to come to that conclusion. Of course, I don't think that Muslims are Fifth Columnists. But can't you see why many Americans might think that, and understandably so? After all, perhaps many more than a few Muslims will kill us, just like Hasan did!" And be very sure you appreciate the unstated, but necessarily implied, conclusion: "We'd better do something before it's too late!"

The pattern is one that should be horrifyingly familiar from history. I will assume I need not provide examples of where it can lead.

For more on these issues, see Chris Floyd. I don't have much to add to what Floyd has said with regard to the Ft. Hood tragedy, and the "hateful echoes" it evokes. Via my tracking information, I was gratified to see that a few bloggers remembered a piece I wrote about certain relevant general issues in response to a similar tragedy a few years ago: "The United States as Cho Seung-Hui: How the State Sanctifies Murder." That essay is not short, and the argument I set forth is complex. But I hope some of you will find it worth the time. Among other subjects, I discussed the central mythology of the United States and of many Americans in detail. I concluded my reflections with these observations:

Iraq has not altered the fundamentals of our foreign policy in any significant way. Our ruling class continues to believe the United States is "the indispensable power," and that we have the "right" to direct events across the globe, and intervene whenever we deem it necessary for the protection of our "national interests." But those "interests" have long been defined in a manner which can justify almost any intervention, anywhere, any time. What we would vehemently condemn others for doing, including the invasion and occupation of a country that did not threaten them, is permitted to us, and to us alone. No action is prohibited to us, while only those actions are available to others that we choose to permit. At the end, Cho was enraged, megalomaniacal, and probably insane. What are we to say of the United States government?

But our nation's crimes are filtered through the State, which dissolves guilt and responsibility, as it sanctifies our sins. Cho is a monster. Our governing class and its unparalleled military commit crimes on a much vaster scale -- and our strongest criticisms are that the crimes were "incompetently managed," or that they represented "poor policy choices." If Cho had survived his massacre, our justice system would likely have killed him. Our State has done infinitely worse, and it has done so repeatedly over more than century.

Yet we do nothing. Our sleep is untroubled. Life goes on.

But not for everyone. No. Not for everyone.

The Fuck You Act

The lies begin with the name itself. The bill is titled: Affordable Health Care for America Act.

In fact, the bill's primary purpose has absolutely nothing to do with providing "affordable health care." The purpose is to extract as much money as possible from "ordinary" Americans -- and to do so at the point of a gun (what do you think those financial penalties and even possible prison time are, if not a gun pointing directly at your head?) -- and shovel it directly to already-engorged insurance companies. Americans will be forced to buy insurance, which as we all know, many of us through deeply painful personal experience, has nothing whatsoever to do with health care. And Americans will be forced to spend money for largely useless insurance -- which insurance will often be entirely useless just when they need it most critically -- in amounts that may devastate them and their families.

How might we refashion the bill's title, in an attempt to render it just a bit more accurate? After all, we surely can agree that we should at least try to speak and write in ways that correspond to the facts in even a vague, approximate manner, if only from time to time. Hmm ... let's try this:

The Fuck You Act

No, in this case, that's not quite right, not quite complete. Ah, here we go:

The Fuck You and Making You Fuck Yourself with Threats of Destroying Your Life Act

This continues a theme of long duration at this humble blog.

Ian Welsh writes:

By now you’ve probably heard about the Stupak amendment, which would make it illegal for any insurance offered on the exchanges set up by the health care reform bill to cover abortion services. It is being allowed to the floor by the leadership, and indications are that there may be enough votes for it to pass. [It did pass.] If it were to remain in the final bill, it would strip practical access to abortion from millions of women, a number which would increase when the exchanges open to businesses.

...

Meanwhile the bill itself will force people to buy insurance, provides inadequate subsidies, and falls hardest on the middle class and young people—forcing them to spend a huge chunk of their discretionary income on average, and doubtless pushing many families into bankruptcy (plenty are on the verge, it is impossible to imagine that this won’t push them over the edge).

And yet it is still supported by the same people who supported it all along. Apparently nothing can happen which would cause them not to support it.

Welsh also writes:

I can only conclude that both Democratic politicians and many progressive bloggers want to be back in the opposition, since they keep being willing to swallow bad policy. Policy so bad, in fact, that it seems designed to hurt Democratic electoral prospects. Forget doing the right thing morally, I don’t expect that of Democratic politicians. But apparently they are also incapable of acting in a way designed to make sure they keep their majority.

This strikes me as not precisely correct. As a practical matter, much can still happen between now and the summer and fall of 2010. A lot of variables will determine how successful the Democrats are in maintaining a majority, beginning but hardly ending with the final form of this bill.

Much more significantly, I think Welsh's formulation (at least in this post) fails to mention a deeper underlying problem. I discussed this issue in the final section of "Those Who Enable the Triumph of Evil," where I excerpted David Swanson's painful and detailed examination of how and why John Conyers, once an admirable politician in many ways, slowly and inevitably surrendered certain key principles that Conyers himself had repeatedly declared to be of supreme importance to him.

A few passages from what I wrote there will convey the sense of the issue I'm referring to, both with regard to the Democrats in general, and in connection with this latest abomination in particular:

Swanson documents Conyers' history on the issue of impeachment in devastating detail. It is a genuine Show of Horrors, and it provides plentiful examples of the rationalizations, equivocations, misrepresentations and outright lies that are required when an individual declines to fight against what he himself regards as monstrous and immensely destructive. Swanson goes through all the major arguments that have been used in the last few years to discourage impeachment -- all the arguments that many of you have undoubtedly seen offered by most of the leading liberal and progressive writers -- and he demolishes every single one of them.

...

This is one of the bitter, deadly fruits of cowardice in the face of evil. It helps to illuminate a critical principle, one that would be very simple to appreciate if it were not for the unstinting efforts made by Democrats like Conyers and the most vocal of Democratic apologists to evade the truth and refuse to acknowledge the obvious: each retreat from battle makes the next battle that much harder. The Democrats are always talking about "saving their gunpowder" for the next fight, which will be the genuinely important one. But each act of cowardice of this kind -- and it is cowardice, we should call such acts by their rightful name -- weakens them, rather than making them stronger. Each concession to evil makes evil stronger, while the coward reinforces his own cowardice. Thus, evil consolidates and expands its reach -- and those who would fight against evil are pushed farther offstage.

...

Appreciate just how pathetically shabby this is. Conyers might have lost his prerogatives within the existing system. That possibility carried more weight than defending liberty, justice and fundamental human decency.

Thus, the lesson: when you choose to be a critical part of a system that has become this corrupt -- and the endless corruptions of our corporatist-authoritarian-militarist system have been documented at great length here and in other places -- you will not ameliorate or "save" it. The system will necessarily and inevitably corrupt you.

With very few exceptions, and the exceptions are so few in number that they cannot alter the general direction of events, these are corrupt individuals operating in a profoundly corrupt and infinitely corrupting system.

That is the basic underlying truth, or at least a statement closer to where the truth will be found. Against that terrible fact, all the rest recedes into the comparative meaninglessness and even triviality of empty public pageantry.

In the NY Times story about the House passage of this detestable bill, we read this utterance from the awful Steny Hoyer:

“We did what we promised the American people we would do,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader...

On this occasion, Hoyer is entirely correct.

If you listened carefully to what almost every politician said during the last election campaign -- and I emphatically include what Obama and all leading Democrats said -- and if you understood what they were saying, you realized that they told you over and over again that they would fuck you in an endless variety of ways, until almost every last drop of your blood and almost every dollar you possess were gone. In their infinite kindness, they won't kill you, for they hope to extract still more from you, as your life and hope slowly ebb away.

They've kept their promise. They've fucked you yet again, just as they said they would.

And they are very far from done.

Tribalism and the Destructive Politics of Demonization (I): The Largely Unrecognized Possibility for a New Coalition

I. Introductory Remarks

My general title indicates that this group of essays easily could appear in my ongoing Tribalism series. While the subject of these essays might argue for including them there, my focus in the Tribalism essays is on the complex interrelationships of intimately personal and family dynamics examined in conjunction with very broad cultural and political forces. Future essays in that series will also deal with concerns relating to human psychology generally. In that sense, the Tribalism series is more abstract in nature, although I always try to connect the broad identifications to specific examples that illustrate how the issues I discuss can be found in the particular.

By contrast, these essays will focus on a more circumscribed area. For that reason, I finally decided to offer these articles as a group standing by themselves. But as will become clear (especially in succeeding articles in this group), certain issues I've already discussed in the Tribalism series are crucially related to this analysis. These are among the many factors I've weighed in deciding how to proceed both with these essays and the Tribalism articles; only time will tell how well I succeed. And as is always true, others will make their own judgments, as they should. In such matters, a key to my own perspective is captured very well in a lyric from Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George, a work that carries enormous personal meaning for me and one that I find deeply moving. I've explained why in some detail, here.

In the song "Move On," Dot sings:

Stop worrying where you're going, move on
If you can know where you're going, you've gone
Just keep moving on.

...

Stop worrying if your vision is new.
Let others make that decision . . .
they usually do!
You keep moving on.

...

Anything you do, let it come from you--
then it will be new.
Give us more to see.

That will do for me.

A future article in this group will explore the nature and significance of the "health care reform" efforts, and why that debate has been conducted in the manner it was. (In broad terms, it has been no debate at all, a fact of overriding significance that should never be ignored.) But having just said that the subject matter of these articles is narrower than that of the Tribalism series, I must begin by placing the health care debate in the crucial political-cultural, and even historic, context.

When a small number of individuals seek to effect major change in the societies in which they live, the success of their efforts depends on a variety of factors. Among them are the clarity of their vision (what precisely it is they "see," using that word with Sondheim's meaning), the degree of dedication they bring to their task, their imagination and passion, and the specific methods of advocacy and action they adopt. In terms of how successful they are, one factor can be of great importance: the alliances they are able to forge, and the segments of society to which the different parts of those alliances appeal. Such alliances can be determinative in the success of the overall effort.

In periods of general social dislocation, upheaval and turmoil, possibilities for coalition-building appear that may not exist in other times. We are living through such a period today in many ways. As I have argued in detail and in many articles, the United States at present is essentially a hollowed-out shell. The country's productive capacity has largely vanished, and we survive (to the extent we do) on the wealth that was earlier accumulated. As I also repeatedly emphasize, I am not saying nor would I ever say that this means a devastating general collapse is imminent. The already-amassed wealth (in all forms, and not solely monetary) is enormous by any historical standard. That and numerous other factors make specific predictions largely useless. Depending on the details of how events unfold, a collapse could occur in gradual steps, over a period of years or even decades, but it could happen much more rapidly. There is no way to know with any degree of certainty. But the overall trend is downward, even severely so. (I would also argue, as I will with supporting evidence another time, that the "real" economic collapse, if you will, has not even occurred yet. But the signs of how very bad that collapse could and likely will be are all around us.)

All of this is very general; an example of some of the key issues already mentioned would be useful and instructive. So before turning to our immediate circumstances, let us consider such an example from history, one of unusual power. This particular example shows the great possibilities; it is also deeply inspiring.

II. "One of the most ambitious and brilliantly organized citizens' movements of all time"

Adam Hochschild's book, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, is the story of how slavery was outlawed throughout most of the world within a century. To understand the historical context in which those events occurred, we should carefully examine these passages from the book's Introduction, "Twelve Men in a Printing Shop":

Strangely, in a city where it seems that on almost every block a famous event or resident is commemorated by a blue and white glazed plaque, none marks this spot. All you can see today, after you leave the Bank station of the London Underground, walk several blocks, and then take a few steps into a courtyard, are a few low, nondescript office buildings, an ancient pub, and on the site itself, 2 George Yard, a glass and steel high-rise. Nothing remains of the bookstore and printing shop that once stood here, or recalls the spring day more than two hundred years ago when a dozen people -- a somber-looking crew, most of them not removing their high-crowned black hats -- filed through its door and sat down for a meeting. Cities build monuments to kings, prime ministers, and generals, not to citizens with no official position who once gathered in a printing shop. Yet what these citizens began rippled across the world and we feel its aftereffects still. It is no wonder that they won the admiration of the first and greatest student of what we now call civil society. The result of the series of events begun that afternoon in London, wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, was "absolutely without precedent ... If you pore over the histories of all peoples, I doubt that you will find anything more extraordinary."

To understand how momentous was this beginning, we must picture a world in which the vast majority of people are prisoners. Most of them have known no other way of life. They are not free to live or go where they want. They plant, cultivate, and harvest most of the earth's major crops. They earn no money from their labor. Their work often lasts twelve or fourteen hours a day. Many are subject to cruel whippings or other punishments if they do not work hard enough. They die young. They are not chained or bound most of the time, but they are in bondage, part of a global economy based on forced labor. Such a world would, of course, be unthinkable today.

But this was the world -- our world -- just two centuries ago, and to most people then, it was unthinkable that it could ever be otherwise. At the end of the eighteenth century, well over three quarters of all people alive were in bondage of one kind or another, not the captivity of striped prison uniforms, but of various systems of slavery or serfdom.

...

Looking back today, what is even more astonishing than the pervasiveness of slavery in the late 1700s is how swiftly it died. By the end of the following century, slavery was, at least on paper, outlawed almost everywhere. The antislavery movement had achieved its goal in little more than one lifetime.

This is the story of the first, pioneering wave of that campaign. Every American schoolchild learns how slaves fled Southern plantations, following the North Star on the Underground Railroad. But England is where the story really begins, and for decades it was where American abolitionists looked for inspiration and finally for proof that the colossally difficult task of uprooting slavery could be accomplished. If we were to fix one point when the crusade began, it would be the late afternoon of May 22, 1787, when twelve determined men sat down in the printing shop at 2 George Yard, amid flatbed presses, wooden trays of type, and large sheets of freshly printed book pages, to begin one of the most ambitious and brilliantly organized citizens' movements of all time.

I will be discussing aspects of this "citizens' movement" in future articles in this group, particularly as they relate to our own situation. Because of its centrality to part of my analysis, I need to highlight one issue immediately.

In my Introductory Remarks, I mentioned the often critical, even determinative, significance of alliances formed to advance toward a goal. Here is a fascinating discussion with Hochschild about his book. Hochschild has been talking with the interviewer about Thomas Clarkson, the man who is "largely and very unjustly forgotten today but he was very well known in his time, and very correctly seen as really the central person in this movement." They also discuss William Wilberforce, the man who is by many (incorrectly) regarded as the hero of the movement to abolish slavery. Here is Hochschild on the significance of alliances, describing how critical this particular alliance was:

Wilberforce was the inside man in parliament. Clarkson was the outside man, the travelling organiser. In a way, to have a successful movement in a democratic, or semi-democratic country as Britain was then, you really had to have both things, because the purpose of generating public pressure is to get the laws changed, and to get the laws changed you do need sympathetic people in the national legislature. Wilberforce led the antislavery forces in parliament, really, for nearly 40 years and remained very strongly committed on this issue.

One of the fascinating things to me is that he and Clarkson who, incidentally, were almost exactly the same age, were diametrically opposite in their politics about issues other than slavery. Clarkson, in the terms of the day, was very much a radical. He profoundly sympathised with the French Revolution. After the Bastille fell in 1789, Clarkson immediately went to Paris and he brought home a stone from the Bastille and he kept it in his house for the rest of his life. He believed in rights for women, he believed in extending the franchise and the rights of labour, and equal education for all, all these good causes. Wilberforce was a profound reactionary on issues other than slavery; he did not want to extend the franchise, believed women should stay in the home, was horrified by the French Revolution. But these two men agreed about slavery, and worked together and collaborated very happily for most of their lives.

This is the model for how such alliances can work, especially with regard to an issue of profound importance such as slavery. It is not necessary, and usually it is not even possible, to restrict one's compatriots to those with whom one agrees about all issues, or even a significant subset of issues. One need not and should not expect or demand that those with whom one joins in a particular cause agree with or endorse one's general views. In this case, Clarkson and Wilberforce disagreed on every other then-current issue of importance and controversy.

But they agreed about slavery, and they agreed that it must be ended. That is all one should require and, I stress, that is all that is necessary. As in this case, the goal must be very clearly defined, and the members of the coalition must be fully committed to it. I would go still further: provided the goal is defined in a way that is not subject to compromise and equivocation, even the reasons which inform the participants' commitment to that goal need not be the same. Provided they agree on the goal itself -- as here, that slavery be ended -- that is all that is needed. As I indicate, I will be returning to this issue in connection with examples from our politics today.

III. The Struggle to See the Possibilities for Connection

Over the last several months, at the same time the "health care reform" debate has continued, there has been a great deal of activity by the "Tea Party" movement and much discussion about it. Yet in terms of the issues I have identified, precisely those issues which I regard as of special importance and as holding the still unrealized potential for a "citizens' movement" in our own time, one rarely encounters a careful and measured examination of the concerns and forces that drive the Tea Party protesters. Of particular significance is the lack of attention to how the concerns and motives of the Tea Partiers could easily connect to certain aims of those who consider themselves Democrats or liberals (or progressives).

I've come across some, but not many, articles that speak to these issues. Here are three examples I've encountered over the last few months. I emphasize at the outset that one need not agree (as I often do not) with the specific terms in which these writers describe what they've seen, and one need not agree (as I often do not) with the particular policies these writers themselves endorse. What concerns me here are the more general forces in play. The writers approach these issues from sometimes very different overall political orientations, and that too is irrelevant -- just as it was in the case of the alliance between Clarkson and Wilberforce. In my view, and with regard to the underlying dynamics, all of these commentators "get it" in a way most others do not.

The first example comes from Dave Lindorff, a progressive, and he explicitly connects the Tea Party phenomenon to the health care debate:

Americans are about to be royally screwed on health care reform by the president and the Democratic Congress, just as they've been screwed by them on financial system "reform."

The appropriate response to this screw-job is the one the right has adopted: shut these sham "town meetings" down, and run the sell-out politicians out of town on a rail, preferably coated in tar and feathers the way the snake-oil salesmen of old used to be handled!

This is not about civil discourse. This is about propaganda. The Obama administration and the Democratic Congressional leadership have sold out health care reform for the tainted coin of the medical-industrial industry, and are holding, or trying to hold, these meetings around the country to promote legislation that has essentially been written for them by that industry--legislation that will force everyone to pay for insurance as offered, and priced, by the private insurance industry. What a deal for those companies--a captive market of 300 million people! There will be little or no effort to control prices, and the higher costs will be financed through higher taxes, and through cuts in Medicare benefits.

This isn't "reform." It's corruption, pure and simple.

Any mention of a system that works--single payer--the system we already have in the form of Medicare for the elderly and disabled, and the system that has proved successful for almost four decades in Canada-- has been systematically blocked and censored out of the discussion. Every effort has been made to bury an excellent bill, HR 676, offered up by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), which would cover every American by simply expanding Medicare to cover everyone.

The only proper response at this point is obstruction, and the more militant and boisterous that obstruction, the better.

Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events, progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own both Democrats and Republicans alike.

The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it and start over.

On Lindorff's last point, that this legislation should be killed, see this post from several days ago. One of the critical issues always to be remembered is that it should be killed given the progressives' own stated goals. Lindorff sees that very clearly; many progressives are resolute in their inability or refusal to acknowledge this shockingly obvious truth. I will examine why they will not see it in these articles.

The second excerpt comes from Matt Welch, a libertarian and Editor in Chief of Reason magazine. Once again, in terms of the issues being analyzed here, his personal general political convictions are entirely irrelevant. Welch is a perceptive observer, and what he observed at the Tea Party gathering in Washington, D.C. is important. Here is Welch:

I just came back from spending four-plus hours with the Don't-Tread-On-Me crowd at our nation's capitol. Expect a full Reason.tv report later, but my snap impressions:

...

* Of the people I ended up talking to, the general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush's spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a "throw-all-the-bums-out" strategy. All but one did not care about Obama's birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.

* People had traveled from North Carolina, Alabama, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and Washington state.

* The view on Obama and his administration ranged from a "heading in the wrong direction" vibe to a "we're not gonna take it much longer" edge.

This is all, obviously, a partial and unscientific take, and not an attempt to encapsulate a huge event, but rather a faithful rendering of what I saw. With that caveat, I had a very hard time reconciling the human beings I talked to and observed with the caricatures described in pre-writes by the New York Times' Gail Collins ("The tea party movement activists range from geeky Ron Paulists who obsess about the money supply to conspiracy theorists who believe that Barack Obama is a noncitizen brought here by people who hate this country"), the L.A. Times' Tim Rutten ("the talk-show/tea-party right...if it has its way–will convert the GOP into an almost exclusively white, zealously religious, mostly Southern party"), and Gawker's Alex Pareene ("Glenn Beck is an actual terrorist, and the people attending his rally in DC tomorrow are al-Qaeda in America").

Political rallies are no place to seek the subtle truth, nor feel particularly glowing about your countrymen, and today was no different in that regard for me. But the meta-fact about a huge anti-Obamanomics protest eight months into his term is certainly significant, and very little of what I saw made me fear that Alex Pareene will be blown to smithereens by a suicide hijacker from Arkansas. I am confident, however, that I will soon be made to fear what I utterly failed to detect.

The third article I will excerpt is by Mike Elk, who also attended the Washington, D.C. gathering. Elk is, like Lindorff, a progressive. He offers many observations that I find especially valuable, but his headline indicates a very serious problem that I will discuss in much more detail: "Martin Luther King Would Have Loved the Teabaggers, Not Called Them Racists."

The article repeatedly refers to "teabaggers" and its variants. I offer a few words about that term at the end of this article, and I will have much more to say about the term and its meaning and significance in the next installment. With regard to Elk's article standing alone, but most emphatically not in connection with its widespread usage (where the terminology's significance is much greater and much worse), I consider this a very unfortunate blemish. But in this particular, very limited context, we can still appreciate the significance of Elk's commentary:

A few weeks ago, I attended the teabagger protests in D.C. The thing I noticed the most about the folks there was that, for the most part, they were friendly, nice, hardworking people. Sure, there were some crazies; sure, there were some racists. For the most part, though, they looked like the type of folks I grew up with in the labor movement, coming to D.C. to participate in a protest and spend the rest of the weekend taking in some monuments and museums. These weren't rich suburbanites; the teabaggers I saw were mainly poor people, whose trip to D.C. was probably the only the vacation they would be able to afford this year.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, I had known many poor white people, but they all seemed to vote for Democrats because they had manufacturing jobs and were union members. Gradually, though, the unions—which were a means of educating people about politics—evaporated under the anti-union policies of Democrats and Republicans alike. I saw more and more strong Democrats turn Republican as they began to distrust a Democratic Party that took away their jobs with policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement and one massive corporate giveaway after another.

...

People are confused. They are angry, and they have little faith in government.

...

[T]he progressive movement—in particular, progressive bloggers—are making a big mistake in attacking the other side by calling them racist. It merely makes them feel defensive because nobody wants to listen to someone that is attacking them with such an emotional bomb.

It makes the teabaggers resent the progressive movement and view progressives as rich, college-educated elitists who only want to tell them how wrong they are.

Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck are giving white working-class males a huge hug. [Elk's emphasis.] They are saying, "Come here; we understood you; we are one of you. We will fight on your behalf against elitist liberals who call you names." Working-class people, especially men, respond by listening to Glenn Beck even more and attacking progressives. It's an endless, destructive cycle in which no one wins.

As Martin Luther King explained in his sermon "The Strength To Love":

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.

Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

During the whole dialogue on the teabaggers, I never heard the narrative of why these poor people were turning up at the town halls. They were turning up because they were scared of change, because the only change they have known is their standard of living dramatically decreasing over the last 30 years. I never heard anyone talk about how most of the teabaggers are the people that need health care reform the most.

In fact, we got off message entirely. We stopped talking about health care reform altogether. We failed to articulate a progressive vision these people might adopt. We took an eye for an eye, leaving everyone blind.

Very few of us made any attempt to really reach out and embrace these teabaggers on the issues that we share with them. Many of their concerns about the bailout, NAFTA-style trade deals and the general loss of trust in government are core progressive issues. We could lock arms with the teabaggers and form a powerful alliance, but, instead, we attack our potential allies because we do not take the time to engage them.

...

If we don't communicate with the white working class, we are never going to achieve true progressive change. We are just going to attack each other in an endless cycle and fail to realize our shared values.

It's time that we rise above immature name-calling and start talking to the teabaggers. Together, we can win!

The prevalent use of "teabagger" to describe a very large group of protesters is a notably vicious smear, and an especially contemptible one. The significance of this usage is multiplied many times when one considers that any group of protesters represents a much larger number of people holding similar views. In light of Elk's valuable commentary, his statement that progressives should "rise above the immature name-calling and start talking to the teabaggers" carries very heavy irony indeed. It is deeply unfortunate that Elk should unthinkingly and lazily adopt this usage, while simultaneously himself providing the evidence as to why the smear is unjustified.

In the next article, I will explain in some detail why I consider this term a particularly destructive smear, one that seeks not only to dismiss and delegitimize a huge number of individuals, but to render them less than human and thus to demonize them. At the same time, the perspective that the usage reveals is unable to recognize the great opportunity that exists here, an opportunity that all three of these writers see in their different ways. In my view, the widespread, repeated use of "teabagger" by so many progressives, and the ends to which that usage is directed, reveal a great deal about the individuals who so use it -- and none of it is good.

Until next time...

The Seductions of Proximity to Power

Via Corrente, I was directed to this perceptive and highly interesting account of a meeting between a group of economics bloggers and "senior Treasury officials." A list of the invited bloggers can be found here. From the latter post, we learn what can and cannot be discussed about this meeting: "As it is, I can talk about it, but not quote any officials there, nor say who was there from the Treasury."

To state the issue informally, I can only observe that to insist that the identities of the Treasury individuals be kept secret is deeply pathetic. This is identical in principle to the widespread practice of relying on the alleged "authority" of anonymous government officials, even with regard to the most crucial issues, and we all know (or should know) what that leads to. See, e.g., the criminal war on Iraq, and the ongoing demonization of Iran. I also observe that this kind of insidious practice only continues because people allow it to continue, by participating in meetings like this, for example. So make of that what you will.

But Waldman's account has several points of interest. Here, I will mention only a couple of them. The first is this:

The second thing I'd like to discuss is corruption. Not, I hasten to add, the corruption of senior Treasury officials, but my own. As a slime mold with a cable modem, it was very flattering to be invited to a meeting at the US Treasury. ... It very clearly was not the purpose of the meeting for policymakers to pick our brains. The e-mail invitation we received came from the Treasury's department of Public Affairs. Treasury's goal in meeting with us was to inform the public discussion of their past and continuing policies. (Note that I use the word "inform" in the sense outlined in a previous post. It is not about true or false, but about shaping behavior.)

Nevertheless, vanity outshines reason, and I could not help but hope that someone in the bowels of power had read my effluent and decided I should be part of the brain trust. The mere invitation made me more favorably disposed to policymakers. Further, sitting across a table transforms a television talking head into a human being, and cordial conversation with a human being creates a relationship. Most corrupt acts don't take the form of clearly immoral choices. People fight those. Corruption thrives where there is a tension between institutional and interpersonal ethics. There is "the right thing" in abstract, but there are also very human impulses towards empathy, kindness, and reciprocity that result from relationships with flesh and blood people. That, aside from "cognitive capture", is why we should be wary of senior Treasury officials spending too much time with Jamie Dimon. It is also why bloggers might think twice about sharing a conference table with masters of the universe, public or private. Although the format of our meeting did not lend itself to forging deep relationships, I was flattered and grateful for the meeting and left with more sympathy for the people I spoke to than I came in with. In other words, I have been corrupted, a little.

In my view, Waldman's self-awareness about these issues takes the worst sting out of them from one perspective, but the corruption still remains corruption. True, he acknowledges that, but it's still corruption. So from another perspective, perhaps that makes it worse. (And in that connection, what to make of this, from earlier in Waldman's post: "it was an extreme privilege to sit across a conference table and have a chance to speak with these people. And despite the limitations of the event, I'd rather there be more of this kind of thing than less.")

The stakes in this particular case are very minor, so it's not a momentous question either way. However, when the stakes are raised, corruption arising from closeness to power and the perception of having "influence" (or even just hoping that one does: "I could not help but hope that someone in the bowels of power had read my effluent and decided I should be part of the brain trust") can become very important indeed. So this is a dynamic well-worth noting.

The second passage that arrested my attention was this, and it's along the same lines:

The most interesting aspect of the meeting was anthropological, getting a look at how senior Treasury officials behaved, how they interacted with us and what kind of thing this was to them. It was a two hour meeting, but different groups of officials came at us in shifts, and stayed with us for 20 to 40 minutes. The tone of the meeting was open, earnest, and informal. But somehow, it never felt like we connected, like there was a lot of actual communication occurring. There were eight bloggers, and although some of us spoke more than others, we were all aware that "air time" (as Yves put it) was scarce, and we limited followups to make sure there was time for others. The officials, on the other hand, didn't seem to perceive the time as precious. One spoke very deliberately, very slowly. Others were quick to pick up on and run with funny tangents, anything that could serve as a focal point for harmless banter. (The name of Michael Panzner's blog, "Financial Armageddon" played that role a lot, so perhaps "harmless" is not quite the word.) This is just my impression, and I may be mistaken, but I got the sense that they do this kind of thing frequently, these rolling meetings with some group of people whom it is important to treat as important, but whose conversation they don't necessarily value all that much — people who are there to be "brought into the tent". (It reminded me of when, a long time ago, I had to do technology demos for an endless stream of corporate backers.) I felt like, aside from the talking points above, their openness, earnestness, and sincerity were the core of what they were trying to convey. The trenchant verbiage back and forth was just something that had to be endured while sustaining the appropriate attitude. I don't blame them for this. In fact I may be projecting, describing how I myself would behave if I had an important policy job with this sort of "public affairs" meeting as a frequent interruption. Nevertheless it was my impression.

If you put these two passages together, you see that the second excerpt very accurately captures the real point of the meeting: not to listen to and seriously consider the bloggers' views, but to bring the bloggers "into the tent." I would argue that Waldman's acknowledgment of the fact that he was "corrupted" (albeit only "a little," in his view) makes his own tentativeness about the purpose of the meeting from the government's perspective very unconvincing. He is very tentative ("I may be projecting..."), but his own earlier remarks establish not only that what he gently offers is in fact what was actually going on, but -- most importantly -- that it works.

In effect, the Treasury officials were saying: "See? We're really good guys. We want to engage with you about all this, and we're on your side. And you're all so smart, so of course we want to hear what you think. Work with us, okay?" And the officials are also conveying, at least emotionally and implicitly, that criticisms shouldn't be too harsh: "After all, we're all on the same side, right? We're all good people, with the best of intentions." And as I said and as Waldman acknowledges, it works: "I was flattered and grateful for the meeting and left with more sympathy for the people I spoke to than I came in with."

As I also indicated, I don't intend my own observations to be unduly harsh with regard to Waldman or the other bloggers who attended this meeting, at least not with regard to this example alone. This was a very minor event, with no implications as to policy or future government actions that are apparent. But as Waldman suggests, this is only one example of a much larger pattern: the various mechanisms that government employs to neutralize opposition, thus making it much easier for government to pursue those goals that matter most to it. I've written at length about one very significant example of this same dynamic, an example that has already had enormously damaging and destructive effects: Obama himself. For a discussion from over a year ago, see "The Fatal Illusion of Opposition."

Even if Waldman's example is a minor one, I would argue that the general dynamics are of immense importance. And because the overall mechanism is so critical, perhaps this event isn't so minor after all. Waldman's account provides a valuable window into how these dynamics work and how effective they are. I'll be analyzing further instances of the same phenomenon in some upcoming essays, and those examples are more obviously of much greater consequence.

So, to be continued...

The Internet as You Know It Will Cease to Exist

Hey, relax. It's not going to be the end of the world -- but as my headline says, in time it may be the end of the internet as you know it.

Cory Doctorow:

The internet chapter of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a secret copyright treaty whose text Obama's administration refused to disclose due to "national security" concerns, has leaked. It's bad. It says:

* That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn't infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

* That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet -- and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living -- if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

Doctorow has pulled out two additional provisions, which are similarly bad. (On the first point above, I'm not at all sure that Doctorow's argument regarding Flickr, YouTube and Blogger necessarily follows from the preceding sentence, although I certainly understand his reasoning. In any case, the provision is still remarkably bad. It's also extremely vague: what precisely does "proactively police" mean and require? Perhaps it's spelled out in the full document. But unquestionably very bad.)

Over the last several years, we've all heard claims like the following very often. I state it in general terms, to try to capture its various iterations. But you're all familiar with how it goes in essence: "The truly great thing about the internet is that it means tyranny will never succeed the way it could in the past. Almost everyone will have access to information about everything! The people are empowered as never before. Despotic, authoritarian government is therefore consigned to the dust bin of history." Et cetera, and so on, and you can even put whipped cream and a dozen cherries on top of that.

Only a cursory review of history would indicate that claims of this kind are offered with deadening regularity. Every new invention will change things forever! Each significant development means that life will never again be the same! In the area of recent technology alone (recent in historic terms, if not in the spans of time most people seem capable of retaining, which reach approximately three months max), Life and The Whole Universe were permanently altered, like, forever, man, 'cuz of the radio, then teevee, then cable teevee, then VCRs, then digital, then blahblahblabbityblah ... and then ... TA DA! THE INTERNETZ!

Please. Psychology, human nature and, more particularly, the dynamics of power and social organization alter only over very, very long periods of time. In certain respects, they don't change at all. A few of us might hope they would change and that entirely new ways of interrelating and organization would be found (see, "Contemplating a Different World"), but that's a very long-term project. I mean, long-term.

And to circle back to this particular example, if you understood the possibilities that might be realized by the internet, do you seriously think those people and interests possessing the most power and wealth did not? Yes, we're all special and unique and all that keen stuff, but the ruling class is people, too (revolting thought, I understand, but also true). And the ruling class is not stupid. It is certainly not stupid about this kind of thing. So our betters will do everything in their power to harness and redirect every advance to their own purposes. Again, consult history. This is always the pattern.

Some of the comments to Doctorow's post are intriguing. Here's one that I thought cleverly captured part of the forces operating here:

Look folks, if this copyright treaty means protecting Mickey Mouse from unauthorized reproductions, then it's a small price to pay to forever risk losing access to civic participation, health information, education, registration and renewal of government documents, global communication, access to government, weather and traffic, emergency service information, freedom of speech and assembly....

Obeisance to the Mickster is an eternal value. I mean, dude, eternal.

But here's the good news. Just as claims that the invention of the globbekgortz will catapult us all into the gabillionth dimension are overblown, so too predictions that this trade agreement, as abominable as it appears to be, will cause all the universes to self-destruct within the next few seconds go just a tad too far. Just a tad, you know? Here's a comment that speaks to that point:

OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PEOPLE!!!

Just open your wireless port, call it parasite.net, and then set yourself up as an 'ISP' with an FTP, web server, torrent tracker, etc. If you can convince enough people in your area to create access points and mirrors of the content we'll eventually cut out the telecoms and have a truly distributed data and communications network. Isn't that right Cory?

This might be rephrased, using what I view as a critical guideline for future action in many areas of our lives: Go local.

If you want to resist the oppressive power of the criminal large banks that are now sustained and even further enlarged in significant part with your tax money, as they increasingly impoverish our own lives: Go local. Avoid the large banks, and find a good, much smaller one. (Of course, part of what's going on is that the massive financial companies in conjunction with the immense power of the federal government -- thanks, Obama! -- are trying to wipe the smaller banks out of existence altogether. But they haven't fully succeeded in that effort, not yet.)

Buy your food from farms or co-ops in your area, to the extent you can. Go local. In part, this was the possibility I indicated in "Contemplating a Different World," and in the earlier, "The Tale that Might Be Told."

So even if the worst realities suggested by these treaty provisions come to pass, other possibilities will be identified and explored. In time, some of those possibilities will be realized. And then the whole process will be repeated again.

The tune changes, but the dance goes on. As any number of posts here indicate, I'm obviously not in the least denying that the ruling class is largely, if not exclusively, populated by vicious bastards, and I'm certainly not minimizing the profoundly horrifying level of devastation and suffering they cause. But the dance goes on.

We'll have to learn some new steps. That's always the way it works. That is, as we say, life. And that's a very good thing.