Category Archives: Portrait of America

What is Trey Gowdy Waiting for?

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Congressman Trey Gowdy runs the 5th annual select Congressional Witch Hu..I mean Committee on Benghazi, otherwise known as the Stop Hillary At All Costs Committee. With all due respect to Benghazi, and those 4 dead people, the committee’s real interest has been in either finding or fabricating a “smoking gun” that would let the American People know just how much the GOP hates the former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State. Gowdy says, “Just wait…we have big news…” This was several months ago, after Clinton handed the Committee’s GOP members their asses in her now-famous “eye roller” appearance before them. Since then, the FBI has been carefully gathering its “evidence”, but we hear nothing else from the group.

Now I get it. Gowdy is waiting for the primary results to shake out. If Bernie gets the nomination they can just sit tight and let the Koch’s $900 million worth of “Honeymoon in Russia” ad buys do their work (look it up), along with every right winger on the planet laser-focused on message: “America is not a socialist society. Capitalism is our way of life.” (Here’s the ad: slo-mo images of sun-kissed Old Glory waving along with fields of grain and kids playing baseball, affluent grandpa serving up a turkey a la Norman Rockwell – meanwhile the concerned motherly female voice-over – “America was built on the spirit of independence and personal freedom, where anyone can strive to realize their dreams. Do you want your grandchildren to grow up in the good old USA?” – images now abruptly switch over to slower-mo Hammer/Sickle overlaying Bernie’s angry-looking face, red flags waving in a barren field, gray drab room full of angry-looking brown-uniformed bureaucrats scowling at the camera – motherly voice becomes ominous now “…or the (big “Soviet” block letters cover the screen) USSA? Vote Ted Cruz in November. Vote for freedom.” Cue GOP landslide.

But if Hillary wins – what then? Hillary isn’t a commie. Simple. The day after she takes the nomination, announce her indictment for crimes against the United States. What crimes? Well, passing on classified e-mail on a non-secure server is plenty for them to work with. Sure, it’s not really that big a deal, and she probably couldn’t have realized the stuff she received in her In Box would later be classified, or in a couple cases already was classified, and at bottom some 99% of classified stuff is unnecessarily classified, and a conviction would be difficult to get. Sure. But the law is the law, and politics ain’t beanbag, and $900 million is $900 million, and every minute she’s under indictment she’s vulnerable, distracted – and losing.

This could well be the strategy behind the current lawlessness of the Senate majority, refusing to perform its duty under the Constitution. Why bother with Obama’s Supreme Court nominee when the White House is a lock?

On the plus side, I still don’t think it will work. I’m beginning to think the woman could go 15 rounds with Sugar Ray and not even take a corner.

You Say You Want a Revolution? Well…You know…

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The fact-challenged narratives that are informing this election cycle, not to mention the caricature candidates, make it more clear than ever that the oligarchy has nearly completed its work. The Parties, in other words, are weakened almost unto death. If you think about it, the outcome that is most desired among the “400” (forget percentages – about 400 people run everything you care to name, the .000001% if you like) is a dysfunctional, factional, barely legitimate government that is constantly at odds with itself, distracting the voters from the actual daily business of government (which is protecting the interests of the 400) through personality cults, amusing theatrics, and of course the constant threat posed by “them” (terrorists, Mexicans, liberals, CEOs, the Clintons, whatever). The 2016 hate-filled presidential bread and circus express, complete with soulless money-grubbing media supplying big microphones to the loudest, most obnoxious voices steeped in ignorant fear and lies —  this serves as our new crass substitute for what once resembled a self-confident political process, at least most of the time.

So if you have the unsettling feeling that everything is about to fall apart,  remember it is by design, and this chaos is being purchased into existence by people who want it this way. The oligarchs will win a rare prize if the voters elect a president who is himself a card-carrying hater of all things federal, a head cheerleader for the destruction of the awful, corrupt “establishment” (i.e. the government as we know it, your friends and neighbors, AFSCME union members, civil servants, cops, teachers, librarians, toll booth workers, park rangers, the DMV, my dad the soldier). The picture is one of a deluded Nero fiddling away at airy ideological ditties in the White House while the massive bureaucratic engine of Washington goes quietly about its never-changing long-term tasks, such as preserving the unbalanced power structure via the tax code and other arcane regulatory regimes, thereby supplying oligarchs with the only self-enrichment and dynastic development tool they need in steady supply: your tax dollars in the form of supply-side tax giveaways and guaranteed interest payments on government “debt” (bonds). The oligarchs are happy to underwrite public debt when the government refuses to collect enough  taxes to pay for itself. Keeping tax rates low on the wealthy means they have plenty of money to lend Uncle Sam instead of just giving it to him, thus making still more profits off of profits that were barely taxed in the first place (i.e. capital gains). But hey, you don’t get rich writing checks to the government! What’s more, the condition serves to symbolically undermine a chronically “indebted” government as a poorly run, ineffectual, wasteful enterprise.

But don’t oligarchs also want safe streets, safe schools, good health care, etc? Sorry, the American oligarchy has already constructed its “parallel” elite society within the nation’s borders on your dime (private learning/health care/financial/social/leisure institutions, private security, gated communities). And of course if things get depressing at home they have the money to globe-trot to all the Earth’s ritzy destinations. Meanwhile their minions in Congress are actively neglecting public infrastructure and public institutions (the dilapidation of which emphasizes the “uselessness” of “excessive” government taxation). Of course, some  notable  exceptions to the “let it rot” philosophy of so-called “limited government” include law enforcement, prisons, the military and its many weapons, which will always be fully funded for obvious reasons. No, the ‘waste’ to be cut from government, the waste that is “ballooning” our national debt, is of course the social safety net – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The longer this trend continues, the more we will hear bought-and-paid-for politicians muse about how we “can’t afford” to care for our most vulnerable citizens.

This is the plan: eventual de-legitimization of representative democracy through cultural/perceptual manipulations that undermine the federal government’s efficacy in the minds of voters  – some of whom may then predictably demand a “political revolution” but won’t know what that means, nor how they are going to make it happen within a political system – and under the watch of a massive law enforcement apparatus – that is now fully controlled by their economic adversaries. This oligarchic control over a thug-like political class will, if they succeed, become the norm, will be the new face of our “democracy” as more and more disaffected voters walk away from what has become, frankly, a vulgar process that is beneath a sovereign individual’s dignity.

Most Americans, of course, aren’t even paying attention.

Mad Men Made Sane

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I like TV shows, but I only watch a few of the modern ones – I might like some others, but who has the time to wade through all the crap?

One show I like is Mad Men. But I might like it for different reasons than most people. Some people like the period clothes, some have a crush on Don Draper or Betty or big Joan, some think it’s great storytelling (it’s not great, but it’s good). On the other side, I’ve heard it called a soap opera, I’ve heard it called misogynist and racist and depressing. Maybe. The reason I like it is that it’s an excellent dramatic portrayal of a society confronting the nihilism of the modern world. The 1960’s ad business milieu seems the perfect environment in which to experience that confrontation firsthand.

The cover of the April 8, 1966 edition of Time magazine asked the question “Is God Dead?” I believe Mad Men is one dramatist’s answer. And it’s not “yes” or “no”.

In the world of Don Draper, there’s no right, no wrong, only what “is”. There’s no saving grace, and nobody – and everybody – gets what they “deserve”. It’s a world untethered from any higher authority or over-arching moral code.

In an early episode, Don Draper in his fine suit is denigrated by the beatnik friends of his mistress as they sit around her apartment smoking weed. They are dissing establishment ad man Don for being part of the “big lie”, which implies the beatniks are above all of that, on some higher and better plane. Don answers them with: “I hate to break it to you, but there is no big lie, there is no system.” After a thoughtful pause he delivers the coup de grace:

“The universe is indifferent.”

Don’s shot across the bow of pious morality is a warning to the self-righteous that their reality is not the only possible reality, their good is not the only good. There are other, competing realities, and the people who believe them are just as convinced of their veracity as anyone else (for example, just watch the monotheists and atheists go at it). More important to me, it’s a warning to people raised on traditional “good versus evil” narratives that those, too, are only stories. Reality is something else – reality is what really happens in the world.

Reality should be self-evident, but it’s not, which is the root of our problem. We have a whole collection of phrases expressing the wish to get to what is real beneath what we perceive: “The real deal”, or crazy Ayn Rand’s “A is A”, or hippies with “the nitty gritty,” or old school “brass tacks”, or the “nuts and bolts” of a situation.

One of the greatest minds of the 20th century, the English novelist Iris Murdoch, wrote a novel called Under the Net, which includes this statement:

“All theorizing is flight. We must be ruled by the situation itself and this is unutterably particular. Indeed it is something to which we can never get close enough, however hard we may try as it were to crawl under the net.”

In other words, we impose a “net” of cultural belief systems and traditions on the reality of our sensory perceptions (a baby bird falls from its nest and dies – what does it mean?). Call them religions, superstitions, social mores, gender roles, philosophies, whatever. Our philosophical “net” of order, which we apply to the surface of our chaotic everyday reality, causes us to think that by extension there is some even grander system that is somehow manipulating these various smaller outcomes, both happy and sad, toward revelation of some great universal TRUTH, which we will someday know if we only persist in our struggle in “good faith.” The peace of God, someone said, surpasses all understanding. But even though we never really can, Murdoch expresses the belief that we should always try, as much as possible, to discern what’s “under the net” rather than just be content to perceive reality “through” the organizing net(work) of our preconceptions.

There’s nothing particularly new about this idea, I know. The poet William Blake wrote, long ago, “I must create my own system…or be enslav’d by another man’s.” It’s always been a favorite line of mine, since I first read it. Blake knew all our systems are invented and ephemeral. As a poet and outlaw, why imprison yourself in some banker’s or vicar’s construct of reality? No – better to live your own reality, however terrifying it may be.

I haven’t seen the last season of Mad Men yet, so I don’t know if Draper gets the “comeuppance” many are waiting for – whether he wins or loses in the end. This was supposedly a big cultural deal. Some see him as a total rat – after all he’s a liar, a fake, a cheater and a bully. They have anticipated his downfall and would cheer his ultimate failure as a sort of moral justice. Others see him as a victim of circumstances, still others see him as the kind of “real man” who’s fallen out of fashion in post-Alan Alda America.

To me, it doesn’t matter what happens to Don Draper. If he wins, it’s because a complex set of circumstances, only some of which he controls, have resulted in him winning. If he loses – same reason. In Don’s world, it’s all a crap shoot. If we feel frustrated by that, I think it’s because of our steady diet of happy endings, of stories large and small that almost always “reward” faith and hope while almost always “punishing” immorality or cynicism. Writers know that’s what we like. But it’s not real.

We can hold out for a just and fair future society, but it is not very likely to arrive on its own or be ushered in by ancient philosophers we’ve since deified. We must choose to build it ourselves. The past is the best predictor of what the future will bring – in short, continued moral ambiguity and human frailty hobbling our worldly systems, and zero direction from above (if there is an above) to get us on the better path. We must choose to see the right path with our human, open eyes. As the oft-repeated quote, attributed to Ghandi,  goes, “We must be the change we want to see in the world.”

While its stories can veer into melodrama, Mad Men depicts a society grappling with this reluctantly reached philosophical conclusion, and all its attendant modern anxiety and frustration, with aplomb.

Editorial – Notes on the Passing Scene

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–Revelations on global warming are coming fast and furious, such as an announcement the other day that atmospheric temperatures in Alaska have risen 3.6 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit over the past five decades, and another announcement that the Arctic ice cap is shrinking rapidly. It appears even our “leaders,” who generally prefer to ignore the environment in an apparent hope that it will go away, are being forced to admit the reality of industrial society’s contribution to the greenhouse effect. If only we could get them to admit that it’s time to do something about it.

–As we watched in horror, Katrina raged, people suffered and the government–all of it–failed utterly in its primary task to protect and assist its citizens. However, we were provided, and continue to enjoy, a spirited, roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-to-it display of “the Washington blame game.” So we can take heart that at least one function of government remains operational in times of peril.

–Think of all the speeches we heard, all the programs we financed, all the money that flowed to state agencies, all the training, all the equipment, all the “mock attacks”–all the budget-busting resources poured into the post-9/11 push for better local disaster preparations and greater national security. On second thought, don’t think of it. It’s too depressing.

–Say what you want about Cindy Sheehan–and if you’re a pundit, you have–the woman is doing exactly what this country and its laws were set up to accommodate: a citizen speaking out against actions of government with which she disagrees. Now, this may make her a hero to you, or a traitor, but really she’s neither. She’s just an American with something to say. And yes, you have the right to disagree with her or not listen to her. No one said you didn’t.

–A recent study suggested that gasoline prices would have to remain in the five dollar a gallon range for five years in order to create the kind of behavioral change–combined trips, carpooling, purchasing of more fuel-efficient vehicles–needed to reduce dependency on foreign oil. Even then, they say, demand will continue to rise because of new drivers. Back in the forties we conserved in order to win the war. Now, it looks like we’ll have to win a war–or maybe several–in order to avoid conserving. Do I have that right?

–Speaking of war and Cindy Sheehan, a writer in Slate recently pointed out that president Bush’s thesis–that we have to “complete the mission” in Iraq in order to honor the sacrifice of the fallen, which includes Sheehan’s son–is a textbook example of the “sunk cost” fallacy. Applied to economics, those in thrall to the sunk cost fallacy attempt to justify future spending on an investment by citing the “loss” of past spending if more is not spent to achieve success. An everyday example is finishing that expensive meal even though doing so is likely to make you ill. The money is spent either way, and if you stop eating now you’ll probably feel better, but you cram in those last bites in order to justify the cost. With respect to Iraq, it may be logical to stay and incur future losses if there is a good chance of achieving the objective. But without a clear accounting of what the long-term objective is, along with its value to the nation and world and its likely cost in future American and Iraqi lives, it’s difficult to see how we as a nation can make a rational decision one way or the other.

Virtual Being

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I’ve thought a lot lately, and written about at times, the phenomenon of the virtual world. Specifically, I’ve pondered the impact of the virtual reality offered up by Second Life and, to a lesser extent, online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft. My take, and the reason I’m interested, is that the ever-widening spaces of the virtual world represent a new type of reality and existence for humans, heretofore unexplored and unknown.

If I bring this up in a public space, I invariably get a curiously defensive response from early adopter/technophile types who will argue that none of this is new, that humanity has always endeavored to escape, however temporarily, the physical world through inventions of virtual worlds – through literature, drama, psychoactive drugs and, later, video games and film.

Fair enough. But what I’m seeing develop is something of much broader impact, and it is due to the medium you are now engaging: the Internet. As prevalent as fantasy and “worlds of the mind” may have been throughout history, none of the methods for fashioning other worlds, until now, provided the prospect of a persistent, universally shared alternative physical reality and an alternative identity (or multiple identities) for the individuals inhabiting that reality. I believe this is the defining difference of online virtual worlds compared with past escapism, and the reason they are exploding in popularity – not just the easily labeled virtual worlds of Second Life and multi-player online games, but all of them – the online forums, the chat rooms, the shopping malls, the movie houses, the sex dens, even one’s e-mail correspondence can take place, due to the Internet, in an always-present, always available (with the advent of Blackberries, universal WiFi, netbooks and the like) and always populated alternate reality. And the most striking difference, I think, is that this alternate reality no longer represents an “alternate” to the “real” world – it is equal to if not more compelling to plugged-in individuals than the so-called real world. The virtual world, in fact, as demonstrated by late human behavior patterns, is presently competing with the real world for our attention. And among many individuals, it appears to be winning.

This is new. If someone in the past, for example, were to spend a disproportionate amount of their time living a Star Wars fantasy, or if you prefer, dressing like Jane Austen and pretending to be a denizen of Regency England, we would have, as a society, designated that person as at least “out of touch” and, at most, a kook. Think “Trekkie.” But today, and often by necessity, many of us spend a very large portion of our time interacting not with Nature and our fellow beings, but with an LCD screen and our fellow Avatars or screen names or e-mail addresses. We may never meet these “people” (and in the case of online forums/worlds/gaming are unlikely to ever meet them), and yet it does not seem strange to us that we now divide our contacts–our friends and associates–between “people” we know and – well, whatever we want to call the partial version of people we deign to “know” online. (We don’t necessarily know them – we know their online persona. Case in point: the FBI agent who spends all day pretending to be a 14-year-old girl.)

Evidence that the virtual world is “winning” the battle for our attention is anecdotal but compelling.  Often it seems change in human behavior is generational – that is, that novel ways of living are established in our youth (because everything is new anyway), and persist through our adulthood. If this is so, then look at the youth of today – they are totally at home in the virtual world, and many seem disengaged, bored or even restless when not connected to it. When socializing with younger people I know, it’s not uncommon for them to have their cell phones open and before their eyes the entire time, effectively dividing their attention between the “real” people they are with and the virtual information that may become available. It’s important to note, because it represents the advantage the virtual world has over flesh-and-blood humans. To wit: it is instantaneous, up-to-the-minute and universal in reach. Sitting at a table in a bar, you have a pretty good idea of what’s on offer for the next hour or two – the present people sitting, drinking and conversing. But on the table, your Blackberry is a  Siren, a portal to another – faster acting – reality, one which potentially offers you everyone you know (or in the case of Facebook, have ever known), and the latest news from around the globe as filtered for your preferences. In contrast to your drab flesh-and-blood companions, the phone offers instant access to an entire reality contained in cyberspace, filtered and channeled directly to its little screen.

This phenomenon has been lately noticed in business meetings, during which the “high-powered” folks will monitor their Blackberries for any contact or information that may override the more or less “static” presentation of the current meeting in the (predictable) physical world. Or maybe they’re just playing Solitaire. Presenters at meetings have noted they feel they are “in competition” with meeting attendees’ devices, and that they are at a natural disadvantage in such a contest – no flashing colors, no news, no tweets from Ashton Kutcher, no stock updates, no surprises.

The bizarre phenomenon of “driving while texting” probably would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But it is prevalent enough to be an issue in this society, and it signifies the pull of the virtual world – we can’t even let it go while we’re fully engaged in the physical world and at risk of seriously compromising our place in it.

This is not meant as a criticism of technological progress, and I would hope this site is evidence enough that I am not a technophobe or Luddite. I don’t actually know (nor does anyone) what the spread of virtual habitats  portends. We may become a nation–a world–of sedentary screen gazers who forget what a tree looks like, or we may eventually ramp down our obsession with the virtual world and place it in our technology tool bag alongside digital cameras, DVDs and Marconi’s wireless. But we are living, at least part of the time, and for many of us a good part of the time, in a new reality, and I would argue that it is the first “new” reality for human beings since the earliest days of our embrace of civilization – represented by the inventions of writing, agriculture and animal husbandry.