A Wave or a Knee Jerk

It evidently is kosher in the political commentary world to describe recent US elections as Wave Elections, in which the wave goes the left and then to the right and then back to the left and on and on, citing the independent voters as a growing phenomena that now controls the political destinies of both the parties and the nation. Whichever way the independents think the wave should go; that is where it goes.

So a part-time cynic might respond: "So, national politics and policies are now controlled by a minority of people who either never took the time to form a real opinion or make a deep analysis of reality and, thus, vote how their gut, instead of their commitments/principles/conscience/convictions tells them to vote. But, hey, let's get rid of the part-time guys and go to the full-time cynics. What would they say? Well it might start out the same: "Our country has a significant minority of people who have no political/economic/social analysis or point of view that would guide their political leanings, i.e. a whole bunch of stupid people. But then, the analysis would change: This makes is easy for the corporate and financial sectors to control government to their liking and for their profit. And, it gets even better....for the corporate/financial sectors. These independents are actually getting the big head with many of them beginning to think that they have power when, in fact, they are dupes of larger interests who are pushed and pulled the way these larger interests want them to be pushed and pulled.

The thing about stupid people is that they don't ride waves as this would require some critical judgment about waves, when to get on, the dangers, the cost/benefit ratio, etc. What stupid people do is respond with a knee jerk to the latest stimulus and then try to explain the knee jerk with logic which is supplied by one or the other party or the folks who finance them.

So, for instance, the independents (those are the stupid people), they respond to the fact that we have a huge debt with the knee jerk reaction of opposing the current administration and giving power back to the folks responsible for approving the spending that brought us the majority of the current debt we have. The independents (since they don't bother with facts, because to have them would imply you have to organize, prioritize and then make sense of them) respond to high unemployment (which many of them only see as a fear, and do not experience as a reality) by giving power to the folks who did not want to save the auto industry and its jobs, or the financial sectors and its jobs, or the banks and its jobs. The cost, by the way, of saving these jobs and institutions which make a considerable contribution to the well being of our society is that the government made a profit while saving tens of thousands of jobs. When was the last time a Republican made a profit on legislation they passed. Okay, you are right, the Republicans have passed legislation that has enabled corporations to make huge profits, more than they deserve..but, I was referring to a profit for the government that, theoretically would benefit all of us not just a handful of us.

I will stop here, because, in fact, the independents are too easy of a target and they will always exist and we just have to learn to live with a lot of stupid people around. The downside is that there remains little chance that we escape the chains placed on our system and our lives by the corporate/financial sectors which can buy and sell both governments and independent voters by the dozens whenever they so desire. And, if the corporations find that they are feeling constrained they just get their lackeys in government, as recently happened, to pass legislation giving them free reign to buy as many independents as they please without any oversight. Carl Rove now is back in business.

The other side of the knee jerk is that sometimes it can become a tsunami, a wave really cannot, without an explosion beneath it. Take the second Bush term. That should have been a wave, but, instead it was knee jerk caused by, let me see, could it have been veterans who initiated a huge media campaign financed by corporations? Could have been. Well, after the tsunami, the corporations got disappointed with their lackeys on the right, so they brought in the left to save capitalism (that is essentially what Obama has done with the saving of the financial institutions that finance the corporations and, at no cost to the taxpayer. What costs the taxpayer, it can be remembered, are wars, military spending which is the other way that the government serves the corporate interests. But the left are lackeys that the corporations don't really trust - they just come in to clean up the mess the Republicans make of the economy now and then (balance the budget under Clinton and stabilize the financial institutions under Obama) and the left always goes too far with their salvation, such as regulations which would prevent the unconscionable profits of the Bush era in the future in favor stability.

Now, here's the funny part about the knew jerk. The media actually thinks it is a serious reflection of the will of the American public, parroting the winning political party's own self-delusion about their importance. It is not. It is laughable what the pundits are saying about the meaning of this most recent election. The only thing is means is that the corporate interests which control our state are worried that Obama will go too far in regulating their interests and maybe even forcing them to pay both for their mistakes and even make a hefty contribution to the common good. So, they finance the Tea Party which, ironically, rails against the influence of large, wealthy interests on our government (well, they did until they realized that they needed the money of these guys in order to mount a campaign).

So, let's see who the corporate folks want in 2012. If you are a democrat or a republican or a green or anybody which an organized mind capable of critical thought and can form commitments to principles/values, you are free to vote as your conscience/principles/convictions tell you to vote with the absolute assurance that however you vote it will contribute to the victory of the folks who control the knee jerk voters.

Giving the Match to the Arsonist

Seeing the results of tonights elections brings back the feelings that haunted me the night I watched the nationa re-elect George Bush six years ago. Why would you give the arsonist a match? but we did and the burning down of America continued. Now, just two years after the fire was put out, we do it again; we give the match back to the arsonists.

Thankfully, we have a president, and, evidently, a Senate that still believes in building not burning.

You should look at the exit polls: who voted for whom. Rich old white men carried the day. People who have lost jobs actually voted democratic in the majority. People who think they can make a lot more money voted Republican...they thought the same when they voted Bush back in and look what happened to their investments.

It is a night that proves what James Carville once observed when asked what he could make of the fact that there was an uproar from sectors of the nation in response to the news that President Obama would address children in an elementary school. Carver said, well we just have to get used the fact that we have a lot of stupid people in the nation. Indeed.

The question for the nation, by the way, is not the one that the news media seems to concentrate on tomight - what the election means for President Obama - but rather, what does the election mean for the American people, and, beyond that for the world in which we live because, despite Tea Party objections, we actually do need the rest of the world and they us for us all to prosper.

Well, I predict good things in the next two years, but not as good as they could be. While the Tea Party Republicans will treat the nation to a ton of Patriotic moralism, all of which amounts to nothing, the economy will grow and begin to prosper and we will end the war in Afghanistan, or at least take it down a notch or two in cost and we will make great strides in developing alternative energy like solar and wind and all our pension plans will get back more or less to where they were before Bush cut them in half with his half baked ideas of world dominance, unleashing the robber barons and tax cuts that bankrupted the nation.

This time, the firefighters will contain the arsonists so that they cannot burn the nation down again, so soon. Then we will see, in 2012 if the nation got any smarter.

For the moment it does not bode well on that front. To our credit, the voters didn't go for most of the really brainless canidates that the Tea Party servedu up to the nation, but they did go for the most dangerous ones like new Senators Rand Paul from Kentucky and Marco Rubio from Florida, both of whom gave special attention in their victory speeches to the fact that they believe that the United States is the greatest nation, not just now, but the greatest nation ever!!!! We could mention that that they provided no evidence and we know that they have extremely limited contact with the world outside of this hemisphere and that we lack clear criteria for what would qualify us for this accolade and that history demonstrates that most demagogues and dictators resort to this kind of jingoism to blind their followers as to what they really intend to do to the nation; but it would suffice to say that this statement is absolutely irrelevant to the the question of how to improve the current state of affairs in the nation in the world (they both agreed that there is something wrong in this greatest of all nations - this is called: having it both ways). I am quite sure that no one in the audience bought this attempt to manipulate minds and hearts and blind us to more pressing truths; becuase if they did, in any numbers, then we can see the real problem that we face: we have met the enemy and it us.

Boston Should Sue

Boston should sue the Tea Party for giving New England patriots a bad name. If it were not clear a year ago when the Tea Party was making its way onto the political scene, it should be now that the Tea Party not only has brought together folks with extreme tendencies toward meaness and stupidity, but it has also served to demonstrate exactly how politically and constitutionally illiterate the American public has become (or maybe it was always that way). Tea Party candidates have, so far, demonstrated lack of knowledge of the Constitution they say they are defending, most recently the first amendment; demonstrated that they never took one course in political science, confusing center-right policies of the Obama administration with Socialism; and, shown that they don't undestand the most basic principles of math; not being able to count up the debt and spending of the 8 years of the Bush administration as they criticize the Obama administration for government spending and increasing the debt. In fact, the American people should sue the Tea Party for casting doubt on the basic capacity of our people to be able to manage simple concept and to use the powers of reason to confront national problems.

The patriots who tossed the tea of English ships into the Boston Harbor would turn over in their graves to see the spectacle of uninhibited ignorance and and unintelligible political analysis that comes out of the mouths of the Tea Party candidates. And, we will soon be trying to save the country from its own grave if the Tea Party gains any significant toe hold in the legistlative branches of our national and state governments.

In fact, rather that sue, we should just throw the Tea Party overboard...but we won't, because, in fact, it may be that the Tea Party really does represent a significant portion of our population which would be proof that we have regressed in all senses since December 17, 1773 when' after the events of the day before, the Boston Harbor tasted like "earl gray."

What can I say. In a democracy you get what you vote for. Woe is Us!!!

The Future: A Multiparty system.

The United States political system is headed toward a multi-party system. The tempest in a Tea Party dynamics of the current political year is a portent of the breakup of the two-party system and part of what has been an evolving process of the emergence of a multi-party system. Leave behind, for a moment, the utter stupidity and potentially damaging effects of the Tea Party movement. Seen from a larger perspective on the emerging politics of the nation, it is but one more bullet in the head for the two-party system which is systemic source of the gridlock in Washington.

Actually, the Obama administration, like it or not, has been quite effective in passing legislation and in solving national problems, but what appears to be a sea change in the Congress as a result of the current election period will bring us a deep gridlock that will once again paralize the nation and allow the corporate interests to continue their gradual takeover of the country (and the world for that matter).

In order for there to be real transparency in the system and real neogotiation of policies, both internal and international, we need to have parties which more clearly represent their constituents. It is clear that the Republican party is split and the Democratic party is close to that outcome.

Take myself as an example. I am a life-long Democrat. I have never voted for a Republican and will never do so on principle. The Republicans, in my view are the party of war, class warfare and recession. Why the American public wants to give the country back to the folks who just brought us unwanted and unneeded wars and recession is beyond the pale of my analytical abilities to discern.

And, I think President Obama, given the problems he inherited and the public he has to work with, is doing an outstanding job of governing. Nevertheless, in Congress I feel absolutely unrepresented. Locally, I live in a city controlled by Democrats who could be Rockefeller Republicans and I do not feel represented. So, I am looking at the Green Party as a possible vehicle for finding a place where I can express and develop my political ideas more fully.

As it is, people like myself play no role in the political debate. The Democrats will play to some of my ideas in the primary season, go to the middle in the general elections and then govern from the middle-right given the makeup of the voting public. When there are negotiations on policies, legislation, my kind of thinking will not be represented because my brand of democratic politics is not represented clearly in the Congress.

So, I feel like eventually I will change parties and go GREEN. I do not expect to be on the winning side of too many elections, but I will expect that my ideas might find expression in the political debate, a dynamic currently missing. I realize that this might damage the Democrats at election time (although not any more than the Tea Party damages the Republicans), but I don't think that it will end up changing the actual results of politics in terms of policies and legislation. But, in the longer run, I am hopeful that it will serve to make ideas like the ones I and many others have who believe in grassroots democracy, an anti-war, pro human rights foreign policy, and a Green energy policy more visible to the American public and, eventually, more acceptable as a basis for governing our nation in a way that favors our real economic, social and security needs.

If the Tea Party would form a real political party and the Greens would figure out how to launch a project that combines its good ideas with a practical electoral strategy, we will eventually have the Tea Party, Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats and Green Party represented in the legislatures of the land and have a more transparent, clear and dynamic dialogue that will produce better legislation for the country.

As it is for the moment, the Democrats are reluctant to go full blast at revealing or countering the stupidity and meanness of the Tea Party, something a Green Party could do effectively and with gusto if it had a way to become part of the national debate.

In fact, most Western democracies have multi-party systems and they get along just fine. Soon, I am sure we will too.

Here Is Something That Makes No Good Sense

The July 5, 2010 History Issue of Time Magazine has a series of articles about Thomas Edison as a way of treating the subject of Research and Development in the current American reality compared to the great days of invention (Edison's time). At a time in history when staying on top and ahead of the technological and science game pays huge divends for the national economy and, in many cases, for the overall global ability to confront modern problems, our nation is not keeping up with the Asian nations in terms of investment in R and D, and, more critically, we have our priorities absolutely wrong.

Here is what the Time article on the "Electrifying Edison" says about the current situation. We invest about 5 billion a year on energy R and D, $30 billion on medical R and D and $80 billion on military R and D. No wonder that we are spending ourselves into oblivion in order to pay for wars while the crucial question of producing the technology to the give the nation and the world safe, clean and renewable energy is goes untreated and we fall further behind others who have their priorities right. Just imagine if we had invested what has been spent on war in Iraq and Afghanistan on R and D that would lead to solar panels that make economic sense for electrifying homes, or on a national goal similar to the Califormia goal of 1/3 of our energy from safe, clean and renewable sources by 2020. With that kind of investment in new technology, the economy would be much better and the world just as safe...or safer since we would have no need to involve ourselves in unwinnable wars in order to please the energy companies which remain committed to oil.

the $30 billion for medical research seems reasonable except that it probably is going toward producing pharmecutics of the kind advertised on TV in these days where the message is to take a particular drug, despite the fact that it could kill you.

But, we need to reverse the $5 billion for Energy and the $80 billion for military R and D. And, despite the unholy phenomena of the Tea Party, we need the government to lead a massive investment in solar, wind and geothermal power for the nation. The benefits of this for us are tremendous, but also for the world. To the extent that such R and D leads to affordable solar, wind and geothermal, the poor would also benefit as electrification of the isolated areas of poverty as well as the blighted urban poverty areas would bring a host of benefits to people who have so much to struggle against and for, they don't need to spend hours a day trying to meet energy needs for mere survival.

Unfortunately there is no chance that we will do this and, thus, we will suffer the consequences. At a time when the nation cannot see pasts it's obession with migration issues and the Republican/Tea Party's fixation on the question of government spending, Rome continues to burn, i.e. we have no idea of how to stay on the top of our game when it comes to the most critical question for our future peace and prosperity - the rapid increase of production of energy from save, clean and renewable sources. Poor us...and it is literally true...as long as its 80 for the miliary and 5 for renewable energy, we only will get poorer and poorer in our economy and in our sustainability into the future.

It just does not make any sense to lose this opportunity for the future, unless, of course, our leaders really intend and really believe that to be the world leader in wars and arms sale makes either good economic or national security sense. In fact, it makes no good sense.

American Exceptionalism: Wrong, Stupid, Dangerous

I can't remember who the rightwing hit man was who suggested that President Obama didn't believe in "American Exceptionalism" although if my memory does not fail, it was a member of Congress which only shows that you don't have to have too many intellectual abilities or even love America to be elected to national office. The belief in "American Exceptionalis" is exactly what has damaged, diminished and nearly destroyed America's ability to both serve its own people according to its own internal values and America's ability to make an outstanding contribution to the health of the global community.

It is said by some that "American Exceptionalism (hereafter refered to as AE)" dates back to the evaluation made by Alexis de Toqueville that America was "exceptional". Okay, call the defense witness and see what he says. Alexis was on guy with one opinion. Nothing more, nothing less. He was not arguing as most of the proponents of AE, do that American was "above" others, "above" the law or "above" reproach as most of the supportes of this idea do. "Exceptional", were it to be true in some degree, even, really has no trustworthy, objective meaning as it is a judgement. If you googgle "Hotels" in Australia you will find several that are "exceptionsl" or are offering deals that are "exceptional" values. What does "exceptional" mean. In terms of this nation, it most often has meant that we have an excuse for immoral actions, international interventions, and for electing Republican and for starting wars which protect the military arms and oil industries.

There are things that are unique about this nation, some very good, some very bad and most in the middle; but, it could also be said that other nations are exceptional in their own niche areas of history, current reality, etc.

We could have made exceptional progress on health care and education during these past decades when the economy was booming and the national budget under control but, instead, decided we would either give the money back to the rich or spend it on wars that have won us nothing. the wars in Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have been exceptionally wrong, stupid and dangerous to our national well-being, wasting untol trillions of resources and, more importantly, human lives, our own and those of others with the net result our nation is in debt, in a bad economy and totally polarized.

For these and other reasons, "American Exceptionalism" is wrong, stupid and dangerous. It is the dangerous part that is worrisome, because there are more than just one idea that has come forth from America that is both Wrong and Stupid; but few which hold the potential for damaging the nation and the world as much as "American Exceptionalism" has, is and will damage the nation and the world.

The primary point here is not whether Obama believes in "American Exceptionalis". I hope he doesn't, it would serve the nation well. There are many things to like about America, many blessings we have that others don't have (more top soil than most nations, for instance), but none of this makes us capable of or called to be the defender of democracy in the world, nor a power to impose our will on others; nor some "cit on a hill" as theologians have suggested. What it does mean is a special responsibility to take care of the amazing natural resouces we have and use them in a way that bring life to our nation and to other nations. In this sense of working with others we are not called either by God or our own history to be missionaries or colonialists for American democracy, American Freedom, American free-market theory, etc.

Right wing ideologues and Conservative, Patriotic Christians do no service to the nation by supporting the "belief" in "Amercian Exceptionalis". It is not true, it is not helpful and it is dangerous to our national health and any chance we might have to add to the overall goodness of the earth and other nations.

It would be better for us to believe in "American Humility" which would give us an attitude where what we have as natural and human resources, which is rather considerable, even extraordianty; would be used for those purposes that improve the quality of life for our people and for our brothers and sisters around the world. Human beings in general and nations, in particular, do not do well thinking of themselves as "exceptional". It normally leads to losing your way in life, hurting others and damaging yourself.

That being true, then belief in "American Exceptionalis" ought to be part of the litmus test for those who would pretend to serve as presideing. If you believe in it, you might be dangerous and if not, it could be that eventually you could be use for the nation.

This does not mean that we, as Americans, together as a nation or with other nations, do not need to apply our talents, energy and ideas for doing "exceptionally good" things for ourselves and the world. How about working together to see how we could all have solar or wind, or not polluting energy for our homes by 2020. That would be exceptional, but, evidently no one of any real power in the nation thinks that it is either plausible or possible (or, probably more to the point, don't see any self interest served by this project) What about making our schools and colleges extraorinarily exceptional in accepting students of all races and economic class and producing exceptional leaders for tomorrow. No, "exceptionalism" in invokled only when it comes to justifying war and keeping up the moral of the troops. We can do the latter by bringing them home, treat their war trauma, and see if we can be "exceptional" in our ability to fight terrorism and secure the peace without destroying so many homes, buildings and lives. That would be "exceptional", but the meere suggestion will be met with "exceptional" resistance because we all know that the real "exceptional " we seek is really an "exemption" from the suffering of others and from the laws that govern others such as human rights law.

What a sad day for America that it should be taken hostage for hte idol makers. In fact, that is what "American Exceptionalsm", an idol of proportion that masks our slavery under the cloak of patriotism. Too bad for us.