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Re: Re: Re: Re: Reluctantly, metalluk, (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
A brilliant analysis, indeed, metalluk.
Rather than comment upon all your points, most of which I agree with, my inclination is to just leave you with two:
The Right, in my view, is really discounting the Republican Party and, of late, the Religious Right. Neither group, singly or together, can give them a recognizable majority. Instead, like web mavens, they are contending for what I call "the Radical Center," disaffected Republicans, Democrats, "Libertarians," and what have you. As Newt Gingrich said at the last C-pac Convention, and Rush Limbaugh signed on to soldier for, they want to discredit Oabama and have the misguided Centrists (who usually don't really know what they want in practical terms) to COME TO THEM.
How's that for a business plan?
Secondly, I always hold out hope for an awakening, no matter how temporary or self-interest driven, of Americans to what has been done to them in the last forty years. It has now reached our very souls. But I admit, my hope is fading, which is one small part of why I don't contribute much to Epinions any more.
As for your long run optimism, I won't bore you repeating what Keynes said about "the long run," but I'm afraid that the new Utopia will have to be founded on "a planet far, far away" because we are relatively soon going to make this one unlivable for "higher forms" of life.
To the Future! wherever it may be, but . . . what a shame, the greedy waste of it all.
Alex
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Aug 20 '09
10:30 am PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Reluctantly, metalluk, (Reply to this comment)
by metalluk
Thanks again, Macresarf. I agree with some of what you say. Your son's description of the right is both apt and amusing. I share your view that "those wing-nuts . . . believe their ends (of acquiring unlimited wealth and power) justify any means necessary." They make no bones about the fact that they want government's role to be minimized. They favor an unfettered free-market economy, which, translated, means unlimited opportunity to exploit workers and the rest of the public as they go about the business of accumulating wealth through both legitimate and fraudulent means. We agree on that basic premise.
I am less convinced than are you that the power elite in America feel any need to dismantle government as it exists today in America. Democracy is actually an ideal form of government for manipulation by wealth. The federal government poses little obstacle to the interests of the wealthy.
Take, for example, the healthcare "debate." One might imagine that the combination of a "liberal" president and Democratic control of both houses might have posed a threat to the interests of the health insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies, and/or the for-profit segment of the medical community, since the profits and salaries in those three sectors are the main reason why the American healthcare system fails to deliver results competitive with their counterparts in other countries, despite per capita expenditures that are more than twice that of any other developed country. A public health insurance option might have had the effect of improving the cost-effectiveness of healthcare delivery in America while also extending access to all (or nearly all). Yet, this weekend, Sibelius announced that the lack of a public option was not a deal-breaker. Later, Obama himself reinforced the point by calling the public option a mere "sliver" in the overall proposal. Without a public alternative to private health insurance, any legislation passed this year would merely serve to force the uninsured poor, the young, and the healthy to donate a portion of their limited resources to augment the profits of an insurance industry that is already eating up 31% of healthcare dollars. It would be an example of government subordinating public interest in furtherance of the interests of the wing-nuts, as you call them. If this can happen with a "liberal" president and a Congress controlled by Democrats, what does it say about the compliancy of government with the interests of the capitalists? Why would they want to dismantle government as we know it when it is working so well in their favor as it currently exists? Even with their conservative mouthpieces currently out-of-power, the moneyed interests were able to control the direction of the debate with just a few million dollars in campaign contributions and a well-heeled lobbying effort. On the healthcare issue, Obama has now fully capitulated to the special interests.
The conservatives consist mainly of just two groups: the wealthy power-elite and the religious right. The former group has just one concern: maximizing their wealth. Collectively, that Republican subgroup cares little about social issues and is willing to have their party espouse the kind of conservative social views that keep the religious right onboard. When the conservatives are in power (most notably during the younger Bush's first six years when they controlled both the Executive Branch and Congress), they move expeditiously to accomplish their unified objectives (lowering taxes for the wealthy; eliminating the capital gains tax, deregulation) while making a few feints in the direction of socially conservative values so as to maintain the loyalty of the religious right.
The progressive side of the political spectrum, however, is composed of many distinct interest groups, many of whom have specific agendas. Gays want to see tangible advances in gay rights, women want better pay and better representation for women, Latinos likewise, and so forth across the spectrum. There is much less focus among progressives and, ultimately, not substantially more concern with overall "public interest" than among the conservatives. Unfortunately, most progressives are simply self-serving in different ways than are conservatives. Their lack of focus means that even when liberals are ostensibly in control, public interest (as opposed to special interests) is not effectively advanced. After four or eight years, the conservatives are voted back in because they can claim, with some merit, that the liberals proved themselves incapable of governing effectively. Why would the power-elite in America want to upset a system that works so well for them, regardless of which political party is in power?
So, if there is a difference in our points of view, it is that you are more concerned than am I about changes in the governing structure in America that will increase the extent to which the public will be under the control of the power-elite, whereas I am apparently more concerned than are you that we have already reached that point, with the government that we already have.
As for the issue of "optimism," I describe myself as a short-term pessimist and a long-term optimist. In the context of the next fifty to one-hundred years, I see little reason for optimism on the political front, though I do believe that science will continue to change our lives in ways that we can barely imagine at present, hopefully more for the good than the bad. In the longer term, since there is so much uncertainty as to defy reasonable predictions, I choose, as a psychological measure, to remain optimistic about the future of human civilization. Education and enlightenment are slowly developing multi-generational phenomena that work their magic only very gradually. I like, for example, Gene Roddenberry's vision of the distant future and see no reason to suppose that it is not as possible as the various apocalyptic scenarios.
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Aug 19 '09
12:05 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Reluctantly, metalluk, (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear metalluk: I disagree with little you say, but if President Obama is needlessly escalating the foolishness of the original invasion of Afghanistan to establish his bonafides, if he is not going to work for the entrapment of bin Laden, as I suggest, how is he going to escape from "Obama's War"? American politics is fueled almost entirely by emotion these days, as can be seen in the health care debate. Perception appears to be everything now, and those behind the Republican leadership, the corporations and right wing ideologues, are much better at playing on the fears of the electorate than the Democrats, who generally eschew such tactics.
I am convinced that those who would rule America have long been embarked on a program to discredit government at state and federal levels, to limit its effectiveness the pragmatic level of maintaining a warfare state and fueling Wall Street enterprises, thus tapping what remains of the last service markets left in the American economy: education, traffic management, transportation, penal facilities, and of course, medical care.
If by appeal to what I call the "radical center," the well-funded Heritage Foundation types can seize, say, education and health care while discrediting Obama's use of the military overseas and at home (perhaps, eventually privatizing much of it), they may end government as we have known it. I believe this goal has long driven the seemingly insane and inconsistent actions of the Right, since at least the end of World War II, when, for instance, they blamed Democrats for "losing China to the Reds," then shamelessly embracing the the Reds, twenty years later; or criticized the growth in the Deficit and National Debt while expanding military expenditures to a monstrous degree, strangling the services and utilities upon which the people had come to depend with confidence. [I always reflect upon how Postmaster Arthur Summerfield essentially crippled our mail services by subsidizing cheap commercial advertising.]
The right wing is now engaged in a highly dangerous game abroad because it will soon begin to claim, "We could have done it better," which as you suggest, may lead to the exploding of an atom bomb near some population center (an inconceivable human and economic tragedy), and at home, where the stirring up of emotion may lead to violence, riots, and assassinations.
President Obama is not acting so boldly as I should have liked, but he is up against what my elder son calls "a bunch of wily wing-nuts." Unfortunately, those wing-nuts know exactly what they want, but because they believe their ends (of acquiring unlimited wealth and power) justify any means necessary, they are willing to risk anarchy, economic and environmental collapse to achieve those ends.
And the great majority of fearful or arrogant disaffected Americans in the center don't seem to want to be confused with facts. It's all "just the Government's fault."
I am not optimistic, metalluk.
I gather you are not either.
Alex -- Macresarf1
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Aug 19 '09
8:10 am PDT
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Re: Reluctantly, metalluk, (Reply to this comment)
by metalluk
Thanks for your comment, Macresarf. I defer to few people in my level of contempt for G.W. Bush, but you may very well be one of those few – judging from your work with the impeachment movement. Obama may have inherited the war in Afghanistan from Bush, but it is now Obama's war, since Obama has escalated it and put his own strategic stamp on its execution. Obama has reconceptualized the war as an Afghanistan/Pakistan border war and regional conflict, which represents a dangerous expansion of the overall war in the Middle East.
Although I strongly disagree with Obama's new strategy in relation to Afghanistan and Pakistan (one that he presaged during his campaign for the presidency), I do not believe that Obama is the kind of man who would send even one American soldier to his death for the purpose of staving off name-calling by Republican rivals. Since nearly a quarter of Republicans are so-called "birthers" and since some have already referred to Obama as the "Anti-Christ," it is abundantly evident that Obama will inevitably be subjected to all sorts of name-calling, of which "wimp" will be one of the milder terms. Such is the unfortunate nature of politics.
Americans have a quite natural desire to take vengeance on Bin Laden, but we must not let that desire draw us into foolhardy actions. From a strategic point of view (as opposed to the emotional satisfaction inherent in revenge), killing Bin Laden is not worth the nearly 700 American lives already expended in Afghanistan, much less the kind of dangerous "blanketing" operation that you suggest. Assuming that Bin Laden is in the tribal region of Pakistan, such an operation would entail an invasion of a corner of Pakistan, however short-term that invasion might be. Pakistan, however, is an unstable nuclear power with a highly developed sense of pride and sovereignty which would be highly offended by an American incursion. The nuclear weapons in Pakistan are controlled by a military that is only marginally under the control of the civilian government. That military includes some factions that are militantly Islamic, anti-American, and which already provide logistical support for terrorist acts against India. The radicalism of those elements is not based solely on religious fanaticism, however, since Pakistan has some legitimate grievances against India, related to the Punjab conflict, as well as grievances against America in relation to our previous interference in their affairs, efforts to prop up the former dictatorship, and partial client relationship with the current Pakistani government. So, the radicalism of anti-American factions in Pakistan is not going to disappear anytime soon. It would be utter folly to invite a nuclear calamity merely to satisfy a thirst for revenge, however compelling that thirst might be.
Obama has a dangerously exaggerated sense of what American power can and cannot do as well as what it should and should not do.
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Aug 19 '09
6:05 am PDT
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Reluctantly, metalluk, (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
I am in agreement with you.
President Obama has 1) inherited from the Bush Administraton a renewed insurgency in Afghanistan, and 2) he does not want to provide the unconscionable Republican reactionaries with the target that he is "a wimp." His Administration is loath to examine the roots of our Afghan invasion, in which we refused to offer the Taliban leaders proof of bin Laden's involvement in 9/11, which they requested, on grounds that "intelligence assets" would be compromised. [In other words, as in the Bush/Cheney cooked-up attack on Iraq, we were bound and determined to invade from the start.] And he should know by now that he will be savaged in any case, no matter how "macho" he is.
We should, on the basis of intelligence, blanket the area where bin Laden is hiding -- for all the ordinary citizen knows, he may be in a villa on the Riviera! -- and when the man is cornered, capture or kill him, depending upon the circumstances. That is the reason we gave for the invasion, and when we have accomplished it, we may honorably withdraw, allowing these tribal peoples determine their own fate, as they have for over 2000 years.
Beautiful essay, metalluk.
Alex -- Macresarf1
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Aug 18 '09
12:08 pm PDT
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