We are a nation of lawless people. We have all these laws, but we have little law in our own hearts. The fewer men with law in their hearts, the more laws society will impose. The less we govern ourselves, the more we will be governed.
Smart people know this.
Some people really want to rule other people. They want it more than they want anything else.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Friday, October 23, 2009
Good Evening, and Welcome Back
This blog has not been updated in more than two weeks, largely because of my despondency over the lack of readers. This lack of readers is no surprise, as I have taken exactly zero measures to gain readers. The despondency is not due to a feeling of rejection, but rather to a feeling of futility. What is the point in writing if nobody is going to read? If I write and nobody reads, have I truly written? I have not participated in a conversation. The point in writing is that I love to write, and that I will at some point soon begin to solicit readers, and when I do, they will have plenty to read.
Lately, I have read two pieces of Matt Taibbi's work in Rolling Stone, and I have fallen in love with his journalism. Today I discovered his blog from the Huffington Post. This guy is the real deal, and I agree one hundred percent with so much of what he says. I am going to become a follower. His most recent substantive post is one anyone with an interest in government of the people, by the people and for the people -- rather than for the rich and corporations -- needs to read. Let's take a look at how Obama has done, and we will see that "change" and "hope" were just campaign slogans for him.
Let's face it, Wall Street bought Obama in November. Michael Moore shows it, lists the millions Obama received from the different wall street firms. And from medical industry companies. I already linked Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece that demonstrates Obama's sellout on health care. He also has continued the multi-trillion dollar redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class we call the "bailout." Taibbi documents it all. And in this blog post, he gets to the heart of why Obama is a failure for those who want real change, and why the ordinary American needs a new leader:
In future blog posts, I will begin laying out what I believe should be the platform of a revolutionary party. I've been giving this a lot of thought. We want a society in which everyone is guaranteed the opportunity of social mobility from anywhere to at least the mid-middle class. To be solidly middle class. We want a society where everyone who works a full-time job can be a middle class citizen. There should be the opportunity to a few to go much farther. But everyone should be able to be "middle class." In order to have that kind of society, there need to be a lot of changes in how we govern ourselves (for I hold the citizenry responsible for the government it has, as all governments exist on the consent of the governed).
"Ask not if this change will be good for me. Ask if this change will be good for the general welfare."
Lately, I have read two pieces of Matt Taibbi's work in Rolling Stone, and I have fallen in love with his journalism. Today I discovered his blog from the Huffington Post. This guy is the real deal, and I agree one hundred percent with so much of what he says. I am going to become a follower. His most recent substantive post is one anyone with an interest in government of the people, by the people and for the people -- rather than for the rich and corporations -- needs to read. Let's take a look at how Obama has done, and we will see that "change" and "hope" were just campaign slogans for him.
Let's face it, Wall Street bought Obama in November. Michael Moore shows it, lists the millions Obama received from the different wall street firms. And from medical industry companies. I already linked Taibbi's Rolling Stone piece that demonstrates Obama's sellout on health care. He also has continued the multi-trillion dollar redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the upper class we call the "bailout." Taibbi documents it all. And in this blog post, he gets to the heart of why Obama is a failure for those who want real change, and why the ordinary American needs a new leader:
"[W]e have problems whose solutions involve taking on powerful interests, political challenges that will necessarily involve prolonged and hard-fought conflicts, but what we have in the Democratic Party is an organization dedicated to avoiding such conflicts and resolving issues in the manner of a corporate board, in closed meetings with the chief cardholders where things get hashed out to the satisfaction of everyone present."In short, Obama is not a fighter. He is a consensus-builder. That is generally good. But when you have wildly disparate interests, and those interests are directly in conflict, and the people on one side have vastly greater bargaining power than the people on the other, if you are going to try to enact "change" that involves redistributing some of the rewards of the more powerful people to the other side, you need a fighter. We need someone who is willing to FIGHT. As I saw mentioned on AlterNet, Obama has good values, but does he have "principles"? In other words, will he stand and fight for anything? That is an open question. He sure won't fight for economic justice for ordinary people, or for quality health care for all.
In future blog posts, I will begin laying out what I believe should be the platform of a revolutionary party. I've been giving this a lot of thought. We want a society in which everyone is guaranteed the opportunity of social mobility from anywhere to at least the mid-middle class. To be solidly middle class. We want a society where everyone who works a full-time job can be a middle class citizen. There should be the opportunity to a few to go much farther. But everyone should be able to be "middle class." In order to have that kind of society, there need to be a lot of changes in how we govern ourselves (for I hold the citizenry responsible for the government it has, as all governments exist on the consent of the governed).
"Ask not if this change will be good for me. Ask if this change will be good for the general welfare."
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Notice that the filthy rich's haul peaked right before the Crash of '29, and was at its lowest from the 50s to the 70s, when America was number one, had the best economy, and had great standards of living overall. When Reagan took over, the rich got their revenge, and they have been consolidating their hold on the rewards of society ever since. Now, when their haul gets back up to its late 20s peak, there is another crash -- again engineered by their shenanigans.
Maybe this graph shows in visual form that what is good for the rich is not necessarily good for society? That a more equitable division of the rewards of economic activity is far superior.
The rich fight for what is ours. Obama talks "change" and they go into a frenzy, whipping up the rabble against him. He's not even walking the walk. He's a false prophet of change. It just shows how scared they are of someone dedicated to fighting for the lower classes, who can unite those lower classes behind him to fight for their interests. May that person come. May he come.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Comfort and Belief
In times of distress, we turn to the comforts of our childhood. A huge piece of my childhood was my rearing in the Catholic Church. I grew up in the New York City metropolitan area (Fairfield, CT), where Catholicism often means big old churches. Pipe organs and stained glass windows, vaulted ceilings and pillars, huge altars and the Stations of the Cross. The rhythms and cadences of Sunday mass were imprinted in my soul through almost a thousand iterations.
When my wife and I lived in Chicago, the stone walls and pealing bells of the church a block away drew me in. I was fascinated by the building. I loved to photograph it, walk by it, stand near it, look at it from the roof of our apartment building on cold, snowy nights. I began to attend morning mass now and then just to sit inside it and feel that sense of calm. The rhythms and cadences of the mass seeped in and activated the imprints in my soul. It brought comfort.
It was an urban church, progressive, interested in social justice. I could tell most of the people there were poor. Latino immigrants and old holdovers in the neighborhood from another era. I wanted to be a part of it. Sitting there in my leather jacket and jeans, my battered black fedora sitting next to me, I wanted to be a part of it.
My neighborhood in Richmond has a big, old church in it. St. Benedicts. The parish offers a great elementary school (where I hope my daughter will attend her middle school years) that feeds a Catholic girls school (St. Gertrude's, where I hope my daughter will attend high school) and a military academy (Benedictine) for boys. It's not quite my church from Chicago, but it is a photogenic old building complete with stained glass windows, vaulted ceilings, arches and pillars. It has the organ. The rhythms and cadences of 7:15 Sunday mass are the same.
It's a city church, but its soul is more suburban. Most of the people were middle class. Its idea of social justice was to print an open letter from the Catholic Medical Association opposing health care reform. Well, it claimed to want some reform, but it opposed any government involvement and seemed to want a reform that involved talk in generalities while leaving it to the insurance and medical industries to provide care to all. I didn't want to be part of it.
I went there seeking solace. My soul is in distress. My wife and I are in grave financial straits, and the future presents as fearful. We're neither of us terribly optimistic about the economy or the political system. We've had some serious health issues that are adding to the pile of debt we carry. Walking and biking past St. Benedicts, I've felt the draw of the Big Old Church. Seeking that solace, I went in.
It was calming. I stood when you stand, I sat when you sit, and I kneeled when you kneel. As in Chicago, I did not speak or sing, nor did I share peace with anyone around me or partake of the sacrament. Were I to attend confession I would be entitled to take eucharest still. But I choose not to. I choose not to take eucharest for the same reason I choose not to open my mouth -- I believe none of it.
I listen to the mass and I could recite nearly all of it from deep memory. It hasn't changed in 40 years. That comforts me. I listen, and I think, "I don't believe any of this." I don't. It makes me ask myself, "What do I believe?" I've settled such questions for decades now by claiming to be an agnostic and not concerning myself with the unanswerables. I don't care how the universe began, or how life began, or how man came to be. I don't worry about what comes after death (although I confess to being scared of it). But maybe some of these questions do matter.
In the last few days, I've come to decide that I do believe in god. I'm not sure I would define its nature, but I think I have to believe in god. My reasoning comes down to a few things:
I absolutely believe in the existence of spirit, of the soul. The soul is what gives a living being life. It's what binds energy to matter and creates a living being. When life ends, you can run all the electrical current you want through a body and all it does is fry the atoms. It is no big step, then to conclude that there is a source or creator of that spirit, or that all spirit is in fact one entity and that one spirit entity is god. This also, as an aside, leads me to accept the possibility of the concept of soul mates.
The universe is a lawful place. The physical world operates according to laws. Where did those laws come from? Random chance? Generally, when there are laws, someone made them. Someone programs the computers. Perhaps our universe is a child's toy. God is the person who programmed it.
Finally, the world and living creatures are incredibly beautiful, and incredibly ingenious. A human body, an ecosystem, these are ingenious systems. It's hard to believe they developed randomly. Now, biblical creationism and its current descendant are bunk. For all I know, big bang and evolution explain how the place was created. I don't think we'll ever know, and I say "good."
I also believe in Christ. Now, I don't even know if any such person ever lived, and I certainly don't believe the story cobbled together by the churches over the last couple thousand years from about 40 pages of the bible. That story is about as believable as the story of creation. It's a myth created to justify the existence and power of the church structures. What I do believe, though, is that the key to heaven on earth is found in the teachings of those gospels, supplemented by the gnostic gospels. As a system of first principles for guidance of individual and social life, the gospel teachings are far superior to the Madison Avenue Creed that Americans live by, and it is the replacement of the gospel code by the Madison Avenue Creed that is causing the disintegration of American society.
It is my belief in the gospels that leads me to hate Christians. I don't think more than 1 in a thousand has any clue what is really in the gospels. I think if they read and reflected they would realize that everything they believe to be Christianity is really something else. There are so many things that the churches do and teach, so many beliefs and principles that modern American "Christians" live by that are antithetical to the teachings of the gospels. I intuited as a young boy that if Jesus Christ were to return today, he would treat the Christians the way he treated the Jews. The Pharisees and Sadducees and all those other guys, they would relate to the Priests and Ministers and Televangelists of our day. Those synagogue congregations that cast him out and spit on him, those would be today's Christian congregations. He would hang out with the SAME people he hung out with then: the prostitutes and druggies, the losers and the simple people. He would sneer at the PRZHIM license plate on the Escalade, and spit on the suede Guccis of the old socialite spooning out soup on Thanksgiving.
And yet I can sit in a stone cathedral and feel god. I can in my deepest thoughts go back to the gospels for guidance. I think issues through and draw conclusions, and then I see how those conclusions are in a gospel passage I remember from my youth, but I never thought of it that way then. I think back to my college years, and the conversations I had through pen and ink with that odd guy from the Ethiopean Zion Coptic Church, and I find myself once again drawn to many of the ideas he shared.
These issues will be further pursued through this blog. We need a moral change if we are going to avert disaster. I firmly believe that all the reforms and revolutions and laws and PR campaigns and greenings and whatnot in the world are not going to change anything as long as we live by the principles we do. The primary engine driving us to perdition is the Madison Avenue Creed, and as long as we accept that Creed and live by its principles, we will continue on that road. We've become a society that lives by the motto, "I've got mine; fuck off." We are atomized and alienated, viewing everyone else not as a human being with a soul like our own, but rather as a paper cutout of one Group or another. This is by design. All the easier to control and manipulate us. There has to be something better.
It was an urban church, progressive, interested in social justice. I could tell most of the people there were poor. Latino immigrants and old holdovers in the neighborhood from another era. I wanted to be a part of it. Sitting there in my leather jacket and jeans, my battered black fedora sitting next to me, I wanted to be a part of it.
It's a city church, but its soul is more suburban. Most of the people were middle class. Its idea of social justice was to print an open letter from the Catholic Medical Association opposing health care reform. Well, it claimed to want some reform, but it opposed any government involvement and seemed to want a reform that involved talk in generalities while leaving it to the insurance and medical industries to provide care to all. I didn't want to be part of it.
I went there seeking solace. My soul is in distress. My wife and I are in grave financial straits, and the future presents as fearful. We're neither of us terribly optimistic about the economy or the political system. We've had some serious health issues that are adding to the pile of debt we carry. Walking and biking past St. Benedicts, I've felt the draw of the Big Old Church. Seeking that solace, I went in.
It was calming. I stood when you stand, I sat when you sit, and I kneeled when you kneel. As in Chicago, I did not speak or sing, nor did I share peace with anyone around me or partake of the sacrament. Were I to attend confession I would be entitled to take eucharest still. But I choose not to. I choose not to take eucharest for the same reason I choose not to open my mouth -- I believe none of it.
I listen to the mass and I could recite nearly all of it from deep memory. It hasn't changed in 40 years. That comforts me. I listen, and I think, "I don't believe any of this." I don't. It makes me ask myself, "What do I believe?" I've settled such questions for decades now by claiming to be an agnostic and not concerning myself with the unanswerables. I don't care how the universe began, or how life began, or how man came to be. I don't worry about what comes after death (although I confess to being scared of it). But maybe some of these questions do matter.
In the last few days, I've come to decide that I do believe in god. I'm not sure I would define its nature, but I think I have to believe in god. My reasoning comes down to a few things:
I absolutely believe in the existence of spirit, of the soul. The soul is what gives a living being life. It's what binds energy to matter and creates a living being. When life ends, you can run all the electrical current you want through a body and all it does is fry the atoms. It is no big step, then to conclude that there is a source or creator of that spirit, or that all spirit is in fact one entity and that one spirit entity is god. This also, as an aside, leads me to accept the possibility of the concept of soul mates.
The universe is a lawful place. The physical world operates according to laws. Where did those laws come from? Random chance? Generally, when there are laws, someone made them. Someone programs the computers. Perhaps our universe is a child's toy. God is the person who programmed it.
Finally, the world and living creatures are incredibly beautiful, and incredibly ingenious. A human body, an ecosystem, these are ingenious systems. It's hard to believe they developed randomly. Now, biblical creationism and its current descendant are bunk. For all I know, big bang and evolution explain how the place was created. I don't think we'll ever know, and I say "good."
I also believe in Christ. Now, I don't even know if any such person ever lived, and I certainly don't believe the story cobbled together by the churches over the last couple thousand years from about 40 pages of the bible. That story is about as believable as the story of creation. It's a myth created to justify the existence and power of the church structures. What I do believe, though, is that the key to heaven on earth is found in the teachings of those gospels, supplemented by the gnostic gospels. As a system of first principles for guidance of individual and social life, the gospel teachings are far superior to the Madison Avenue Creed that Americans live by, and it is the replacement of the gospel code by the Madison Avenue Creed that is causing the disintegration of American society.
It is my belief in the gospels that leads me to hate Christians. I don't think more than 1 in a thousand has any clue what is really in the gospels. I think if they read and reflected they would realize that everything they believe to be Christianity is really something else. There are so many things that the churches do and teach, so many beliefs and principles that modern American "Christians" live by that are antithetical to the teachings of the gospels. I intuited as a young boy that if Jesus Christ were to return today, he would treat the Christians the way he treated the Jews. The Pharisees and Sadducees and all those other guys, they would relate to the Priests and Ministers and Televangelists of our day. Those synagogue congregations that cast him out and spit on him, those would be today's Christian congregations. He would hang out with the SAME people he hung out with then: the prostitutes and druggies, the losers and the simple people. He would sneer at the PRZHIM license plate on the Escalade, and spit on the suede Guccis of the old socialite spooning out soup on Thanksgiving.
These issues will be further pursued through this blog. We need a moral change if we are going to avert disaster. I firmly believe that all the reforms and revolutions and laws and PR campaigns and greenings and whatnot in the world are not going to change anything as long as we live by the principles we do. The primary engine driving us to perdition is the Madison Avenue Creed, and as long as we accept that Creed and live by its principles, we will continue on that road. We've become a society that lives by the motto, "I've got mine; fuck off." We are atomized and alienated, viewing everyone else not as a human being with a soul like our own, but rather as a paper cutout of one Group or another. This is by design. All the easier to control and manipulate us. There has to be something better.
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Capitalism: A Love Story
For the last week plus, I've been dealing with pneumonia. I was probably coming down with it as early as Wednesday the 23rd, but it was Sunday that I began to feel truly awful. On Monday, I went to the ER and was diagnosed with bacterial pneumonia. I was prescribed antibiotics, given an IV of antibiotics and fluids, and sent home. Now at the end of the week, I am recovering. I still have a way to go to regain my strength, but the antibiotics are working. Another American health care system success story! The story will be complete in a few years when my bankruptcy disposes of the bill.
Saw Michael Moore's latest movie. It's pretty good, pretty powerful. It ends with a bit of intellectual mess, offering up "democracy" as the alternative to "capitalism," but I think Michael realized that it just would not work in America even for him to get tied to advocating "socialism." Not that those are the only two alternatives possible, but they do seem to be the limits of our imagination today. Either we leave the corporations, banks and elites free to do what they want ("Capitalism", which is Good), or we go the way of "Socialism." And "socialism" is bad! It equals goosestepping Bolsheviks presided over by the grinning face of Stalin.
Of course, I have seen some argue that what we have today is not really "capitalism" at all, but more properly termed "Corporatism." I can see a lot of merit to that argument. After all, if "capitalism" is "private ownership of the means of production," and "socialism" is "state ownership of the means of production," then a system where corporations own the means of production should be called "corporatism." It is only by honoring the legal fiction that "corporations are people too" that we can pretend this is a capitalist system.
The statistics and facts in Moore's book are accurate. He's right: the finance capitalists have looted the economy, and the political system has actively assisted them. Then it turned around and handed them $700 billion to bail out the institutions they used in their crimes. Meanwhile, ordinary people have been subjected to "true capitalism." The capitalists have run for their government handouts. Ironic. His ideas for solution are a bit anemic. Populist resistance such as the occasional sit-in strike or "squat in your own house" won't truly change anything. Worker-owned enterprises would, of course, and that is an issue worth exploring at the corporate level. Can some form of true worker-ownership be imposed on the corporate form?
Corporations have to be subjected to the control and benefit of society. That is the true long-term solution to the mess. While people have a right to property, they have no inherent right to corporations as we know them. They have no right to limited liability. Limited liability is a creature of statute, so the government has every right to change it as the government sees fit. Limited liability was created to serve a public purpose. By imposing controls on the corporate form -- or any other limited liability form of entity -- the government can effect real changes. This is one of my core ideas.
The movie was inspiring, though. I found myself moved in places. I found myself wanting to get out and do something. I want to be part of creating the revolutionary movement. It's going to need ideas guys and wordsmiths, people willing to get out and make speeches, argue in council. I'll do those things. Maybe we need a new party. You know how Americans -- especially young ones -- love a party!
Saw Michael Moore's latest movie. It's pretty good, pretty powerful. It ends with a bit of intellectual mess, offering up "democracy" as the alternative to "capitalism," but I think Michael realized that it just would not work in America even for him to get tied to advocating "socialism." Not that those are the only two alternatives possible, but they do seem to be the limits of our imagination today. Either we leave the corporations, banks and elites free to do what they want ("Capitalism", which is Good), or we go the way of "Socialism." And "socialism" is bad! It equals goosestepping Bolsheviks presided over by the grinning face of Stalin.
Of course, I have seen some argue that what we have today is not really "capitalism" at all, but more properly termed "Corporatism." I can see a lot of merit to that argument. After all, if "capitalism" is "private ownership of the means of production," and "socialism" is "state ownership of the means of production," then a system where corporations own the means of production should be called "corporatism." It is only by honoring the legal fiction that "corporations are people too" that we can pretend this is a capitalist system.
The statistics and facts in Moore's book are accurate. He's right: the finance capitalists have looted the economy, and the political system has actively assisted them. Then it turned around and handed them $700 billion to bail out the institutions they used in their crimes. Meanwhile, ordinary people have been subjected to "true capitalism." The capitalists have run for their government handouts. Ironic. His ideas for solution are a bit anemic. Populist resistance such as the occasional sit-in strike or "squat in your own house" won't truly change anything. Worker-owned enterprises would, of course, and that is an issue worth exploring at the corporate level. Can some form of true worker-ownership be imposed on the corporate form?
Corporations have to be subjected to the control and benefit of society. That is the true long-term solution to the mess. While people have a right to property, they have no inherent right to corporations as we know them. They have no right to limited liability. Limited liability is a creature of statute, so the government has every right to change it as the government sees fit. Limited liability was created to serve a public purpose. By imposing controls on the corporate form -- or any other limited liability form of entity -- the government can effect real changes. This is one of my core ideas.
The movie was inspiring, though. I found myself moved in places. I found myself wanting to get out and do something. I want to be part of creating the revolutionary movement. It's going to need ideas guys and wordsmiths, people willing to get out and make speeches, argue in council. I'll do those things. Maybe we need a new party. You know how Americans -- especially young ones -- love a party!
Thursday, October 1, 2009
"The legal system, the regulators practices, traditions, common sense, playing for a longer time horizon of defined sucess (if you eat the sheep too fast its kinda short sighted) a sense of social justice and a different sense of patriotism were barriers that protected the sheep in the past.
The oligarchs are now too short sighted, rewards are misaligned and the regulatory system as unprepared as it was in the 1870-1910 period. Whats more the sheep used to be well versed and better educated about the wolves intent....now they are too fat and too lazy and too easily co opted. imho."
Got this off a NY Giants fan message board. Bill2 expressed the nutshell of the current problem vs. past eras. The current crisis is just part of a bigger dilemma.
The oligarchs are now too short sighted, rewards are misaligned and the regulatory system as unprepared as it was in the 1870-1910 period. Whats more the sheep used to be well versed and better educated about the wolves intent....now they are too fat and too lazy and too easily co opted. imho."
Got this off a NY Giants fan message board. Bill2 expressed the nutshell of the current problem vs. past eras. The current crisis is just part of a bigger dilemma.
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