World weary

"Your analysis is right on, as far as it goes. But this isn't 1972, or even 2004. It isn't even yesterday. I'm as old as you are. Older, in fact. And I can do the world weary bit just as good. But my daughters and my wife's nieces loooove Barack. Their excitement is infectious."
Jay Salter

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Jay, who I quote above, is a long time reader of News Links and a fine blogger in his own right and the following post should not be taken as an attack on his comment. His words only got me started thinking and this led me quickly to the heart vein of my argument, with many interesting capillaries, this in turn helped me to clarify my views and I saw that all of this would give me a fine chance to riff. Eh voilà.

First lets look at "this isn't 1972, or even 2004. It isn't even yesterday".

For a human being today is actually all of those things, whether he or she is aware of it or not. This is something we don't share with trees and rocks. We are the memory animal

From a metaphysical viewpoint nothing exists except the present moment; everything else is merely a mental construction... However making mental constructions is what our species is about and our ability to store up and retrieve the past, to weigh it and to use it as a tool to measure the present, and to use it to illuminate our actions in the now, is an important part of what we as humans are about. Our capability to maintain and organize the past under our observation in the present is what has made us such a formidable and dangerous animal.

So in fact this is 1972 and even 2004 and yesterday and as William Faulkner said, "The past isn't history, it isn't even past".

We are who we are because of what has come before us. The longer you have been around -- unless, like "Ground Hog Day", you have been living the same day over and over again -- the more of a chance you have of finally understanding where you are and who you are and how things work. If that were not true, if memory had no meaning, then old people would be nothing more than young people who have become ugly, slow, clumsy and costly to maintain, with no value to add whatsoever...

Euthanasia would be the logical solution.

Some of us who came to consciousness in the Eisenhower years have trouble realizing, how little consciousness of the past kids have today. Through no merit of our own we were given an historical sense that would be hard to come by for kids today.

We who are in our sixties now had parents -- no matter what color -- who had all been through two defining and collective experiences: the Great Depression and WWII. Everybody had had a hard time in the 30s and all our dads had been in the forces. Those years were constantly put before us as a living thing in our own and in all our neighbors and playmate's houses.

And just as important, TV first became a mass medium and a huge business when we were tots.

All of us were plunked down in front of those 17inch black and white screens and the network owners discovered that they had almost nothing to show us. They raided the vaults of Hollywood to find something to entertain us little brats.

We had the enormous good fortune to be exposed to hundreds of hours of silent comedies, Saturday matinée westerns and Flash Gordon from the 30s and 40's, masses of cartoons going back to the twenties, the "Our Gang" comedies, Laurel and Hardy, all with period music... we were insatiable and they couldn't produce enough themselves to keep us sitting in front of the box long enough to see the commercials.

Unwittingly they gave us a sense of the 20th century. "Gee dad, did you really have to wear short pants like Spanky?" Nowadays children are shown what is being made at the moment. How many children right now have ever seen Buster Keaton or Fatty Arbuckle? Each new generation thinks itself Adam and Eve.

Of course this can be remedied by study. However at the beginning of the 90s I had a conversation with an American woman my age who was a full professor of history at an important American university. She told me that if she tried to assign the same load of work today to her students that we had all carried as students they would surely rebel, their attention span was too short. So although more people go to university than every before, it appears that less is being learned. Perhaps there is some connection?

We read all the time how American youngsters score horribly on all international tests of geography and history. So we would have to ask ourselves what kind of intellectual equipment do the young people, whose enthusiasm for Obama is so infectious, actually have to judge much of anything? Aside from their charming enthusiasm, their smooth skin and flexible joints, what exactly do they have to recommend them as political savants?

What I know for sure is that these young enthusiasts are going to be disappointed. It could happen in the following ways, listed from least to most probable and disappointing.

1. Hillary actually finds some way of knocking Obama out of the race.
2. Obama loses to McCain
3. Obama wins and becomes President

Number three, the most probable outcome, would hurt the most. Because Obama is not going to change anything... even if he isn't a bluff, which I suspect he is.

This is because contradictory forces of enormous complexity push things along and the people involved muddle through the best they can. Spencer Tracy's revelation of his fabulous acting technique comes to mind, "Don't forget the jokes and don't bump into the furniture".

Leaders are symptoms not causes.

The best example of this is George W. Bush. How could a political system produce someone so unfit for the job? How could he get reelected? Its not Dubya's fault that Dubya is Dubya. It's the system's fault for producing him and ours for choosing him.

Now it and we are going to do it again.

The chances of the next president being successful, no matter who it is, are very small. Any one who raises great expectations is doomed to fail before they start.

The greater the expectations the greater the failure. America's role is diminishing in the world, the next president will have to administrate that diminishing. No fun. No glamor, not cool. Tough, sad.

Am I world weary?

A long life of observation, study and rumination leading to some understanding of the world and one's fellow creatures is a privilege and a pleasure for any human being. Who could ever weary of it? DS

Walt Disney meets Pol Pot

West Virginia

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I read this from Matt Stoller on Huffington:

"We have a leader, and he's not a partisan and he can now end fractious intraparty fights with a word and/or a nod. His opinion really matters in a way that even Nancy Pelosi's just did not. He has control of the party apparatus, the grassroots, the money, and the messaging environment. He is also, and this is fundamental, someone that millions of people believe in as a moral force. When you disagree with Obama, you are saying to these people 'your favorite band sucks'." (bold emphasis, and colors mine)

For some years now, I have had the misfortune to suffer from chronic bronchitis and thus have lost touch with modern cannabis. Those of my boomer generation, whose health has permitted them to keep up to date with its development, tell me that the strains of modern muggles have nothing in common in power, purity and effect with the substances that brought such joy to those of us who came of age with R. Crumb and Gilbert Sheldon. If I had any doubts to the truth of the amazing tales of my coevals, this post by Mr. Stoller has completely dispelled them. Stoller's mess of infantile power fantasy and mental masturbation reads like a mixture of Walt Disney and Pol Pot (pardon the pun).

The challenge that the Hawaiian Messiah now faces is how to get rid of people like Mr. Stoller as fast and tactfully as possible and buckle down to "politics as usual" ASAP, if he doesn't want to break George McGovern's all time record this fall.

Stoller's statement, and especially its tone, when read in an attack ad would have a worse effect than Reverend Wright's YouTube loops on masses of voters that the Democrats need to win in November.

A lot of the pressure on Hillary to quit the race NOW is due to a panic that is setting in, because polls show that next week she is fixing to win West Virginia by (hold onto your hats) FORTY POINTS. And then there is Kentucky...

This is how Jay Cost breaks it all down over at RCP:

West Virginia is 95% white, and one of the poorest states in the nation. Demographically, Pennsylvania's twelfth congressional district is a decent proxy of it. Clinton won Pennsylvania's twelfth by 46 points. A recent Rasmussen survey put her up 29 points in the Mountaineer State, with 17% undecided. Another poll had her up 40 points, with Obama under 25%. Kentucky is not as poor or as white as West Virginia, but it is nearly so. Demographically, Kentucky falls somewhere between Ohio's sixth congressional district, which went for Clinton by 45 points, and the seventeenth, which went for her by 28 points. A recent Survey USA poll of the Bluegrass State had her up 34 points - with a staggering 72 point lead in the east, where Obama was winning less than 20% of the vote. Rasmussen recently had her up 25 points with 13% undecided.

West Virginia or Kentucky by themselves are perhaps not that significant in the Democratic primaries, however they do give a taste of an America that will be very visible in November. It is an America that Chris Rock pungently described as:

"filled up with broke-ass white people, living in a trailer, eatin' mayonnaise sandwiches, f*ckin' wit' their sister, and listenin' to John Cougar Mellencamp records."

Now, over the years these folks, all over America, have enjoyed voting against Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis and John Kerry... but Barack Obama has got to be their dream to vote against, not only is he as "pointy headed" and as liberal as the afore mentioned, but they suspect him of being a Muslim and to top it off he is actually black, not a surrogate like Bubba.

This was going to be the campaign that would prove to the world that America has moved beyond race. In fact it is going to prove exactly the opposite and be the ugliest in living memory.

Al Gore would have been perfect this year. Nobel Peace Prize, Oscar, right on the war, visionary on new technology and climate change... Instead we have this nightmare stretching out before us.

The Democratic Party will never be the same again no matter who finally wins the nomination. DS

Israel's 60th birthday

Al Naqba

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I have written a lot about Israel since I began this blog.

I lived there for nearly a year as a young man and had a very good love there and all the good experiences and memories that go with that.

I don't consider myself an "expert" on that country, only someone who loved the place very much... not all the zionut, but the smell of the Tel-Aviv seafront early on a spring morning, my Israeli girlfriend sleeping in my arms, the sweetness of life.

In coming to consciousness politically, I am someone who has gone from being very, very, pro-Israel to very anti-Israel and this saddens me more than a little.

I am not kidding myself into thinking that being anti-Israel and anti its influence on American politics is going to be interpreted by most Jewish people as anything other than antisemitism and that saddens me even more.

My stepfather was a pianist of concert caliber, a doctor of music with degrees from Standford, Harvard and the Eastman School of Music, he had studied composition with Schoenberg and later was one of the pioneers of musical therapy for the mentally ill. In our living room there was a Steinway, concert grand.

Since we had the piano, when I was a boy, practically every weekend there was chamber music in our house. The participants were either string players from the Chicago symphony or psychiatrists: It isn't exactly ethnic profiling to note a high incidence of Jewish people among psychiatrists and string players. They brought their children with them and those were the children I played with every weekend.

As I turn the question of Israel around in my mind I feel that something precious to me has been tainted. DS

Choosing a Veep

Cartoon by Ricardo, El Mundo, Madrid

"In any case, he should pick a woman"

M.J. Rosenberg - Talking Points Memo Café

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This is the world of instant, universal, 24 hour, seven days a week news, where the stories overlap to a point where the Gothic tragedy of an Austrian family plays simultaneously with the incalculable suffering of the Burmese cyclone victims and where all of this horror is often drowned out by the ceaseless humming of the excruciatingly boring, endless and increasingly inane Democratic Party primaries in the USA.

They are ever with us.

At this point some people are even speculating on who would be the Vice-Presidential candidate on a Barack Obama ticket.

I think Mr. Rosenberg of TPM, quoted above, is being premature. The next vote is in West Virginia, where polls say Hillary is set to win by (get this) forty points.

Now West Virginia doesn't send a lot of delegates to the convention, but a loss that heavy in a state which is the epitome of po' white, might give those super delegates some pause... The Democrats can either kiss the "Reagan Democrats" goodbye in November or African-Americans... in the election they couldn't lose.

Although they are more numerous, it is next to impossible for the Super Delegates, many of them beholding to big city machines to choose the white working class over the African Americans. As John Kass explained in the Chicago Tribune,

“It's simple, and it goes like this: Without black voters, there is no big-city Democratic Party run by pink guys in blue suits. President of the United States is important; historically it has provided local political machines with their own hand-picked federal prosecutors. But without the money-making offices of county assessor and mayor, what good is the White House? Black voters would feel betrayed and rightly so. With Obama leading in the popular vote and the delegate count, party officials would have to be out of their minds to consider any other alternative than Obama.”

Mater et Magister, John B. Judis spells it out the dilemma in The New Republic:

In North Carolina, where the white Democratic electorate is liberal and tolerant (only five percent of the primary electorate voted against Obama because of race, compared to over 11 percent in Pennsylvania and Ohio), Obama could still win only 36 percent of white voters. In the fall, when African Americans will only make up about 23 percent of North Carolina's electorate, he would have to win 38 percent of all whites to carry the state.(...) In the Iowa Caucus, Obama defeated Clinton among "moderate" voters by 33 to 31 percent and barely lost "conservatives" by 22 to 21 percent. He was perceived as a middle-of-the-road candidate or, even better, as standing above ideology. But he increasingly is seen as the "liberal" or even "very liberal" candidate. In Indiana, he bested Clinton among liberals 55 to 45 percent but lost moderates by 53 to 46 percent and conservatives by 65 to 35 percent. He can't carry that political image into the fall and hope to defeat McCain. In most of the swing states that he would need to win, liberals occupy a much smaller niche than they in the Democratic primary. Moderates are the key.(...)In the 2004 election, voters repeatedly expressed their preference for a "strong leader," but Obama has yet to establish himself in this respect. He is regularly judged more "honest and trustworthy" than Clinton, but those qualities have proved less important to choosing a president. In Indiana, voters thought Clinton more qualified to be commander in chief by 54 to 43 percent. Nine percent of Obama voters acknowledged that Clinton was "more qualified to be commander in chief." In North Carolina, eleven percent of Obama voters preferred Clinton. Obama appears to be somewhat effete, which will, unless remedied, cause him difficulty against McCain in the fall, particularly among white males.(...) Obama initially held his own among voters who attend church regularly. In New Hampshire, he bested Clinton by 37 to 32 percent among weekly churchgoers--and he didn't have to include religious African Americans in the total. But Obama has increasingly lost this vote and gained adherents among the non-religious. In Indiana, he lost to Clinton among weekly and occasional churchgoers but defeated her among those who never attend church. That can hurt him in the fall in states Obama wants to win. In Virginia, for instance, weekly and occasional churchgoers made up 83 percent of the general electorate in 2004. The challenge for Obama will be to reach out to religious voters without reminding voters of his ties to Reverend Wright.

Contrary to Mr. Rosenberg, I think that -- supposing he finally gets the nomination -- the last thing Obama needs is a woman on his ticket. The Veep is there to cover perceived weaknesses in the candidate's image. As Katherine Hepburn is no longer with us, any other woman (Hillary discounted) I can think of would only play up those weaknesses in Barack Obama's case.

If Obama is not to be just another McGovern-Dukakis, he should choose a furry, southern male as his running mate, one who hunts and fishes and goes to lots of prayer breakfasts. As Henry of Navarre said in similar circumstances, "Paris vaut bien une messe".

Obama and this good ol' boy should be seen hanging out bass fishing, dove shooting and praying together. Maybe even changing the oil of a car. They should be portrayed as the best of "good ol' buddies", (without looking gay or anything, of course) to stimulate working class fantasies of Obama as their own "Magical Negro", which up till now he has only played for the latte set. DS

A billion Chinese can't be wrong, but even if they are... they aren't

One billion pennies

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Before the Second World War, my father worked in a large mail-order firm in Chicago. Among his fellow workers was a very popular Japanese who quit and returned to Japan a couple of years before the war started.

A couple of years after the war ended, the Japanese man reappeared and wanted his job back... They remembered him, they liked him, he was a good worker, he got his job back.

My father and he picked up their friendship where they had left off before the war. Over drinks he told my father about returning to militaristic Japan at the end of the 30s. People in Japan were talking about how they would wipe up the floor with the United States.

"Japan is such a small place," he said, "nobody there had any idea of how big America is, the distances, the scale." There was no way he could communicate his knowledge of America's immense size to his people. Knowledge he had acquired while visiting the company's warehouse all over the USA; exhausting days spent crossing America's vast spaces by car, bus and train.

Only some Japanese navy officers, men who had sailed the seven seas, crossed and recrossed the Pacific, caroused in the world's port cities, had any idea of what he was talking about. They were nervous too, but the army people, with their doll house view of the world, were running the show and they thought that invading and occupying the USA would be a piece of cake.

My father's friend kept his head down and survived the war.

I remembered this story, when I was thinking about Robert Kagan's "league of democracies" and the neocon idea of confronting China. The neocons remind me of the Japanese militarists. They have no idea of what they would have us confront. Here is a sample of what is waiting:

As human rights protesters dogged the Beijing Olympics' torch relay around the world, as supporters of Tibet condemned the violent crackdown in Lhasa, and as Darfur activists demanded change in China's Sudan policy, Chinese young people worked themselves into a different form of righteous anger. In online forums and chat rooms, they blasted Beijing's leaders for not being tougher in Tibet. They agitated for boycotts against Western businesses based in nations that object to Beijing's policies, and they directed venomous fury against anyone critical of China.(...) The explosion of nationalist sentiment, especially among young people, might seem shocking, but it's been simmering for a long time. In fact, Beijing's leadership, for all its problems, may be less hard-line than China's youth, the country's future. If China ever were to become a truly free political system, it might actually become more, not less, aggressive. (...) Even after 9/11, a time when the governments of China and the United States were building a closer relationship, some young Chinese welcomed America's pain. "When the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, I really felt very delighted," one student told Chinese pollsters.(...) They also have begun traveling and working abroad. They can see that Shanghai and Beijing are catching up to Western cities, that Chinese multinationals can compete with the West, and they've lost their awe of Western power. Many middle-aged Chinese intellectuals are astounded by the differences between them and their younger peers. Academics I know, members of the Tiananmen generation, are shocked by some students' disdain for foreigners and, often, disinterest in liberal concepts such as democratization. (...) Beijing has long encouraged nationalism. Over the last decade, the government has introduced new school textbooks that focus on past victimization of China by outside powers. The state media, such as the People's Daily, which hosts one of the most strongly nationalist Web forums, also highlight China's perceived mistreatment at the hands of the United States and other powers. In recent years, too, the Communist Party has opened its membership and perks to young urbanites, cementing the belief that their interests lie with the regime, not with political change -- and that democracy might lead to unrest and instability. (...) In the long run, this explosive nationalism calls into question what kind of democracy China could be. Many Chinese academics, for example, believe that, at least in the early going, a freer China might become a more dangerous China. Able to truly express their opinions, young Chinese would be able to put intense pressure on a freer government to adopt a hard line against the West -- even, perhaps, to invade Taiwan. Joshua Kurlantzick - Los Angeles Times

The neocons idea of confronting China is totally insane.

Kagan is basically saying, "let a hundred Pearl Harbors bloom".

China is a country of one billion people, they have money, they have knowhow, they work hard, they are proud.

They have the world's longest memory.

Size matters.

China is a rule maker, not a rule taker.

China must be accommodated not confronted.

Is this appeasement?

How do you confront an 800lb gorilla?

For starters you call him "Sir". DS

An American left: mission impossible?

The racial divide that has opened up within the Democratic Party is almost certainly less problematic than the hurdles Mr. Obama could face attracting support outside the party in November should he win the nomination. It is, after all, the Republican Party that captured the allegiance of the whites most uneasy about the civil rights movement and its legacy. “It will be a challenge to win a general election with an African-American candidate,” said Larry Bartels, a professor of politics at Princeton. “The challenge has less to with internal tensions within the Democratic Party than with the resentments and racial misgivings of the general electorate.” The New York Times

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You could say that the civil rights movement broke the left in the United States, but at the same time you would have to ask what good a left would be that was predicated on racial inequality.

If the previous sentence could be expressed as a neat mathematical formula, computers could solve the conundrum that has stumped the American left since the 1960s.

This endless conversation has left the poor of America with substandard public education and without decent health care, while what passes for "progressive" politics busies itself with ethnic and sexual identity questions instead of class divisions.

In this the United States not only fails itself, it fails the world. America is the only developed country without any serious social democratic movement and this gives endless comfort to right wing parties everywhere. Many European social democrats try to pretend that the Democrats are their American opposite numbers only to find them in reality corresponding to something similar to Christian Democrats.

And all of this because of America's race divisions. Here is a sample from Pennsylvania:

In the former mining and textile regions of northeastern Pennsylvania, places like Scranton and Wilkes- Barre, (Obama's pollsters) expected to lose by about 10 points. Instead they were defeated by better than 2-to-1. Likewise, in the industrial towns of western Pennsylvania, like Johnstown, home of U.S. Representative John Murtha, a powerful Clinton supporter, Obama lost not by the eight-point margin his team had anticipated, but by 46 points. Bloomberg

With the pundits sounding shrill alarms:

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: “You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years.” That’s why Donald Rumsfeld’s infamous defense of why he did not originally send more troops to Iraq is the mantra of our times: “You go to war with the army you have.” Hey, you march into the future with the country you have — not the one that you need, not the one you want, not the best you could have. Thomas Friedman - NYT

Americans are glum at the moment. No, I mean really glum. In April, a new poll revealed that 81 percent of the American people believe that the country is on the "wrong track." In the 25 years that pollsters have asked this question, last month's response was by far the most negative. Other polls, asking similar questions, found levels of gloom that were even more alarming, often at 30- and 40-year highs. Fareed Zacharia - Newsweek

What we are talking about is decadence... It's been obvious for years, but it seems to finally be catching up with mainstream types like cheery chipmunk, Tom Friedman and the more realist, Fareed Zacharia.

If you wanted to understand what is happening in America, it would easier if you looked at it through the lens of a miniature, opera buffa version: Berlusconi's Italy.

Without getting into an exhaustive analysis, let us say that Silvio Berlusconi is a cartoon version of the US power structure. Silvio Berlusconi incarnates in his sole person the entire American establishment: business, press, television, even sports. The decadence of Italy is like a toy version of what is happening in the United States.

Now, after sixty years, Italy is moving back toward Fascism. (No kidding, the new mayor of Rome is a genuine, arm in air, viva il Duce, former street fascist). Is this where we are headed?

I'll be returning to the Italian example in future posts, if Italy is not currently on your radar screen, please get up to speed. When you do, I think you will agree that the comparisons are most helpful in illuminating of the problems America faces, but on a smaller, more accessible scale. The USA even in decline (especially in decline?) is too mind boggling to readily get your hands around. DS

The Unspeakable... Reverend Wright

More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University. That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA. A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people. Washington Post

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When decrying Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, most of his attackers linger on his support for the theory that the US government created the AIDS virus in a laboratory in order to kill black people. This is cited as proof positive that Reverend Wright is out of his mind.

It should be noted that these theories are given wide credence by people, both black and white all over the world. That in itself is something that should not be blithely dismissed.

Life has made me a devotee of William Ockham and his "razor". As old Bill put it;

"Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate"

Which could be summed up as, "the explanation that depends on fewer variables is probably the correct one". For this reason, I don't favor most conspiracy theories... They usually require too many people keeping a secret, for too long. For this and for no other reason, I don't think it is probable that AIDS was created in a laboratory by the government.

However, I have no doubt whatsoever that there are people in our government who are perfectly capable of doing it and would have loved to have done it and may have dreamed of doing and may even have talked about doing it.

In a previous post I remarked that,

"The 1960s (was) a paradise similar to the one Al Qaeda sells to its recruits. I count myself blessed to have been young at the best time in the history of humanity to be young, when, in the words of Pedro Almodovar, "all love could give you was a broken heart."

And as H. L. Mencken wrote,

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

And the United States of America is probably the most puritan country in the world. Certainly so much good, free, unpaid, sex without consequences must have weighed heavily on the puritan spirit of many of the tight lipped and tighter assed Scotch-Irish of Langley Virginia... but judging by their known work, I have trouble believing them able to pull it off. But certainly not because of any ethical concerns they might have. All these people have enjoyed the suffering of the AIDS victims as it confirmed the sanctity of their own parched righteousness.

So, in my opinion, the Reverend Wright is doing an immense service to his country by dropping this turd in the punchbowl of the farce we call the American political process. It was not wise of Obama to trifle with such a born communicator as Jeremiah Wright. It is also not wise of Obama to dismiss out of hand a theory that is held by such a large percentage of the community, whose votes he counts on.

Reverend Wright is certainly the groom's crazy uncle that the bride's family should meet before giving the girl away. DS

Eeny, meeny, miney moe

Hide and seek

"America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success." Sigmund Freud

Across the country, college campuses have become hotbeds of support for Sen. Obama. Nationally, 70% of Democrats ages 18 to 24 favor Sen. Obama compared with 30% for Hillary Clinton, according to a recent poll by Harvard's Institute of Politics. Many black and many white students wear their Obama buttons and "Got Hope?" T-shirts proudly as a sign that they are part of a post-Civil-Rights generation more welcoming of change and diversity than their parents. But after classes -- and after the occasional Obama rally -- most black and white students on college campuses go their separate ways, living in separate dormitories, joining separate fraternities and sororities and attending separate parties. "It's much harder to be a white person and go to an all black party at Duke than vote for Obama, says Jessie Weingartner, a Duke junior. "On a personal level it is harder to break those barriers down."(...) But working or voting for an African-American running for president doesn't necessarily bridge differences -- on campus or, later, in the workplace. Following a recent discussion in one of his classes about the campaign, in which most students expressed support for Sen. Obama, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, a Duke sociologist, asked his white students how many had a black friend on campus. All the white students raised their hands. He then asked the black students how many of them had a white friend on campus. None of them raised their hands. The more he probed, Mr. Bonilla-Silva says, the more he realized that the definition of friendship was different. The white students considered a black a "friend" if they played basketball with him or shared a class. "It was more of an acquaintance," recalls Mr. Bonilla-Silva. Black students, by contrast, defined a friend as someone they would invite to their home for dinner. By that measure, none of the students had friends from the opposite race. Mr. Bonilla-Silva says when white college students were asked in series of 1998 surveys about the five people with whom they interacted most on a daily basis, about 68% said none of them were black. When asked if they had invited a black person to lunch or dinner recently, about 68% said "no." He says his own research and more recent studies show similar results.(...) When I was at Williams [in Williamstown, Mass.] I thought I had a lot of white friends," says Ashley Brown, a black graduate student at Duke. "But I look on Facebook and I see that they all go to visit each other. But none of them come down here to visit me." She pauses. "Of course, I haven't gone to see them either." Race on Campus: Beyond Obama, The Unity Stops - Wall Street Journal

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Occasionally Americans who read this blog write me and tell me that I've been away so long and that everything has changed... But I found that reading this front page article from the Wall Street Journal filled me with all sorts of painful memories.

There were lots of people of color that I liked in high school and would have loved to have as friends. I remember the unspoken pressure that kept people apart: as solid as a brick wall. And the pressure was just as strong from the black side as the white, if not stronger.

This article confirms for me that little has changed. To me, the surprise was, on learning Spanish, to discover with Hispanic people of African descent, Cubans, Venezuelans etc, that race wasn't the barrier. Hispanic culture isn't rigid in color, but in social class. US racism is a culture thing.

Races mix and disappear, but cultures are more resistant. Our culture is Calvinist: brittle and inflexible even in its hedonism.

What has changed is this enormous charade to pretend that things are really better.

I can imagine Marshall Tito orating, like Obama, "We are not Croatians and Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins and Bosnians. We are Yugoslavs!"

I bet he got a big hand too. DS

In the month of May

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This May is the 40th anniversary of the Paris riots of 1968. Much is being written about the meaning and the "legacy" of those days, whether the left still exists or "where are they now" pieces, you name it. A time when Paris still could dictate style to the world and a Paris Hilton could be nothing but a decent hotel.

After giving it some thought, I've come to a tentative conclusion that the period we call "the 60s", which I would place between the election of John F. Kennedy as President of the United States and the oil embargo of 1973, were such an exceptional, dreamlike time that it is practically impossible to relate them to anything that has ever happened before or since.

Today and tomorrow look more and more like history as we have always known it for centuries. Times filled with wars, epidemics, famines and tales told by an idiot, little like those days of serene prosperity and mass free love.

It was an era when, for the first time in history, it occurred simultaneously to millions of otherwise conventional young men and more importantly, to otherwise conventional young women, that they could have sex without having to stare across a breakfast table at that person for the rest of their lives... but miraculously, for a few short years, the girls still got up and made you breakfast... A period obviously suspended outside of natural time.

It was a era of immense personal liberation, where more important than being free, you were freeing yourself. Being free is often tasteless and odorless, but taking freedom is pure nectar.

The combination of a booming economy and full-employment allowed those who were young then to concentrate our fullest attention on the opportunities afforded us by effective birth control and the absence of all the ghastly, life destroying, sexually transmitted, diseases that plague young lovers today.

Opportunities which made the 1960s a paradise similar to the one Al Qaeda sells to its recruits.

I count myself blessed to have been young at the best time in the history of humanity to be young, when, in the words of Pedro Almodovar, "all love could give you was a broken heart".

If nothing else the May 68 of Paris gives us a festive symbol of all of it. DS

The Austrian Horror

The statue of Sigmund Freud pukes

David Seaton's News Links
There are some fantastic political cartoonists in Spain. In my opinion, the best I've ever seen anywhere and among them are a pair that work together, Gallego y Rey. Day after day, week after week, month after month year after year, they are insightful, intelligent and screamingly funny.

Naturally the references are usually local and don't travel very well. a joke that requires much explanation is no joke. Yesterday they drew one of the statue of Sigmund Freud vomiting that belongs in the anthologies of political humor and can be understood by all.

It is of course in reference to the unspeakable horror, recently discovered in Austria. DS

Jeremiah Wright: the Sherpa's revenge

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright

"Barack Obama went to Rev. Wright’s church as a young man and was blessed with the Christian bona fides that would be absolutely essential for a high-profile political career." Bob Herbert - New York Times

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When I saw Jeremiah Wright at the National Press Club, I had one of those moment of remembering exactly what it was like to be an American in America and to realize how during the long years away I had grown another head next to the old one.

My "new" head said to me... " ¿este tipo es 'negro'? ¿negro de que?" "This fellow is 'black'? Exactly what part of his anatomy is black?" I have known Cuban, Brazilian and Venezuelans with more African DNA than Wright who would be puzzled it you called them "black". If Barack Obama is half white then Wright must be at least 3/4 white. Even in the USA, I think if his name was Ignacio López, instead of Jeremiah Wright, very few people would consider him "black".

Of course my "old" head understood perfectly. Being "black" in the USA is a culture and Obama, culturally an outsider, but dressed by nature for the part and wishing to join that culture, could hardly have found a more exciting and "authentic" Sherpa than Jeremiah Wright.

A lifetime, studious, whigger myself, if I still lived in Chicago, I would have certainly have attended many of Wright's sermons. He has really got the stuff!

African-American culture has fascinated me since I was a tiny child.

When I was just learning to talk my parents were getting divorced, which was a before "no fault" divorce and my mom had to "abandon" the home, so I lived for about two years in the old Tivoli hotel in Biloxi Missisippi. My late mother was in those days a young divorcée and a drop-dead redhead, so I spent most of my time in the ample laps of the African-American ladies who actually ran the hotel. Thus, in effect, I became bilingual. To this day I can "pass", without caricature, on the phone. When we moved back up north, I was the only kid I knew that could actually understand Black people when they were speaking to each other.

So I can easily understand that, Obama, culturally an outsider, but dressed by nature for the part, and wishing to join that culture, could hardly have found a more exciting and "authentic" Sherpa than Jeremiah Wright. I can easily understand that, as an Harvard man and Hawaiian preppy, wanting to be down, Obama must have felt that he had found the Rosetta Stone of African-Americanness, when first he set eyes and ears on the Reverend Wright.

Actually, I liked what I saw of Wright at the National Press Club and especially his speech to the NAACP. I think he is a wonderful speaker and what he said made sense. However he speaks like someone of the left and America is a right wing country.

I fear that Obama's "chickens" are also coming home to roost.

I think Barack Obama could have had a hundred other pastors on the South Side of Chicago, that were not as clever or fast on their feet as Reverend Wright, but who were not as controversial either.

But Reverend Wright is not just another preacher, he is a man of great charisma and of enormous credibility in his community... with the political power that carries.

Wright's "Nihil Obstat" gave Barack Obama, a half white, Harvard man, with a distant African-African father, the community credentials that allowed him to build a credible political base in the African-American community of Illinois, from which to continue to play the role he was born to, that of "JFK meets Sydney Poitier"

My question would be, When did Obama consider running for President? Because it should have been obvious to anyone, and certainly obvious to anyone with his enormous skills, that Wright would be poison to a lot of the people whose votes he would need to ever win the presidency, when the Roves of this world would be going over him with a microscope.

He should have begun years ago to, ever so gently, ever so diplomatically, distance" himself from Wright.

Publicly comparing an advocate of "black liberation theology" to his white grandmother from Kansas was probably not the most tactful way of doing that.

Wright may be many things, but I don't think he is anyone to trifle with

Also, when he "distanced" himself from Wright, didn't he know that Wright might be mortally offended and that his pastor was a man of formidable verbal skills and a mighty ego?

Like the Bittergate gaffe, there is something dumb about all of this and if there is any label that I would not have thought applicable to Barack Obama it is the label, "dumb".

Perhaps it is all about what I've been saying for months now, Obama has been brought along too fast. Impatience has spoiled a great talent... for the moment at least. DS

Notes on hiding elephants

"Around the world, there is no shortage of nations who share our values, and are willing to defend them. These include countries like Australia, which sent troops to Iraq; Israel, which has been fighting Islamic terrorism almost since its founding; and Japan, which generally follows a more "Western" policy than most of Western Europe." Rupert Murdoch - WSJ

"The neoconservative vision(...) is essentially an affirmation of ideology. Not only does it declare war on Russia and China, it places the United States in active opposition to all nondemocracies. It proposes a League of Democracies, which would presumably play the role that the United Nations now does, except that all nondemocracies would be cast outside the pale. The approach lacks any strategic framework. What would be the gain from so alienating two great powers? How would the League of Democracies fight terrorism while excluding countries like Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Singapore? What would be the gain to the average American to lessen our influence with Saudi Arabia, the central banker of oil, in a world in which we are still crucially dependent on that energy source?" Fareed Zakaria - Newsweek

"At first, Ms. Dowd's neocon list of last names included only Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, Libby and their "Likudnik friends," but later, as blogger "Silver Surfer" writes on IsraPundit.com, she amended the list to include Cheney, Woolsey and Gingrich. "In Ms. Dowd's view," he writes, "adding a few non-Jewish names to her 'neo-cons' list makes her conspiratorial story-line kosher. But it doesn't. The result is a classical portrait of 'neo-con' (read: Jewish) advisors, who drip poison in the ears of their hapless gentile bosses, while they advance their global plot to subvert true American interests and take over the world--and, as Ms. Dowd is always quick to point out . . . thereby 'advance the strategic goals of Israel.' " Julia Gorin - Wall Street Journal

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It is said that if one wanted to hide an enormous elephant in the middle of the street in a big city, the best way to do that would be to organize a huge parade of circus elephants and hide one's elephant among them.

If we start with the premise (highly controversial) that one of the main interests,of the American policy makers known as "neocons" is to reinforce Israel's position vis a vis the Palestinians, than is is easy to see that in a world at peace, Israel's conflict with the Palestinian people stands out like a lonely elephant on a busy street.

Like some one smoothing a rumple in the covers while putting the final touches on making their bed, a world at peace, with diminishing American influence, would pressure Israel to comply with UN resolutions beginning with UN-242, or the Saudi peace plan. That would mean the end of the Zionist (both Christian and Jewish) right wing fundamentalist's dream of "Greater Israel", including Judea and Samaria. This would be a great relief to many Israelis themselves, but never enough for the neocons.

If however there is constant tension and confrontation between the "West" (including Japan) Russia and China, than Palestine and even Iran become very small elephants indeed.

The necons affirm their attachment to liberal principals. Robert Kagan, one of neoconservatism's most audible voices expresses it thusly:

Only the liberal creed grants the right, the belief that all men are created equal and have certain inalienable rights that must not be abridged by governments, that governments derive their power and legitimacy only from the consent of the governed and have a duty to protect their citizens’ right to life, liberty and property. To those who share this liberal faith, foreign policies and even wars that defend these principles, as in Kosovo, can be right even if established international law says they are wrong.

Somehow, of course, none of this seems to include the human rights of the Palestinian people to escape collective punishment. Here is the law:

No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally responsible.

Laws and Customs of War on Land (Hague IV); October 18, 1907, Article 50

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section I : Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories, Article 33

Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, Part III : Status and treatment of protected persons, Section III: Occupied Territories, Article 53

This oversight converts the liberal interventionism of the neocons in pure sophistry,: "a subtle, tricky, superficially plausible, but generally fallacious method of reasoning". Sophistry by any definition of the word.

That something so spurious, so baldly and cynically false should be mainstream discourse gives an idea of how the American political system has deteriorated.

For example, Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal lends its pages to French neocon and philosopher(?) Bernard-Henri Levy, to vilifie former President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter and simultaneously give us a Polaroid of Barack Obama :

"Is it the senility of a politician who has lost touch with reality and with his own party? Barack Obama, even more clearly than his rival, has just reminded us that it will not be possible to "sit down" with the leaders of Hamas unless they are prepared to "renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and respect past agreements." Could he be suffering from a variant of self-hatred, or in this case a hatred of his own past as the Great Peacemaker? All hypotheses are permitted. Whatever the reason, Mr. Carter has demonstrated an unusual capacity to transform a political error into a disastrous moral mistake".

Apparently in Levy's opinion, Obama's rival, Hillary, is not sufficiently clear in her rejection of former President Carter and only promises to "obliterate" Iran.

As to McClain, Fareed Zacharia, describes the ageing senator's position best:

I write this with sadness because I greatly admire John McCain, a man of intelligence, honor and enormous personal and political courage. I also agree with much of what else he said in that speech in Los Angeles. But in recent years, McCain has turned into a foreign-policy schizophrenic, alternating between neoconservative posturing and realist common sense. His speech reads like it was written by two very different people, each one given an allotment of a few paragraphs on every topic.

I have some (not very much) hope that McCain's neocon part is pure, cynical pandering in order to get into the White House. And when you pander to the neocons you cannot be tepid, you have to pull out all the stops. as is shown by Levy's rapping Hillary's knuckles.

If I were a neocon, however, I wouldn't trust McCain very far on this, all through his career, until he saw the presidency in his grasp, he has been a realist and an exponent of the Weinberger-Powell doctrine: once in the White House and because of his age and whether he likes it or not, he knows he would probably be a one-term President, so it's anybody's guess what he would do.

A slim hope indeed.

Probably nothing, not even the credit crisis and the collapse of the dollar, has exasperated America's friends, clients and allies and provoked more of their contempt than the supine helplessness of the American political system on this question. Certainly future Chinese historians will have fun with it. DS

DNA in the ground and the farmer's daughter +

David Seaton's News Links

I'm still rolling Obama's "Bittergate" remarks around in my head... I'm pissed off, but not at all in the same way that most of the people who say they are, say they are.

Certainly I don't think there is a racial element in this particular thing. For example, I agree with a lot of what Reverend Wright says. And I have no problem at all with Bill Ayers, who has done a fantastic job helping to improve Chicago's schools... However nobody could accuse me of being very mainstream and I am not running for president of 300 million people.

What I don't like about the way Obama talked about small towns is how dumb the remarks seemed. I think they are incredibly shallow. As I remember his autobiography, some of his dad's people still live in villages and he wasn't exactly living in Jakarta during his Indonesian years. My "journey" has taught me that small towns and small townies are much the same all over the world

I have mentioned in previous posts that although a daily espresso sipper (that's the only coffee available here) I have extensive, clod hopping, shit-kicker roots. I spent my childhood summers in the tiny town in Western Illinois where my maternal grandmother was raised and my father's people were Iowa farmers.

Now before I wax too sentimental on small towns, I confess I live in Madrid, because, unlike in many countries, here I can live anonymously in the center of a big city without being a plutocrat or risking my life at every turn. I think I would mutilate myself before living in a small town anywhere. (I would commit suicide before living in suburb anywhere). But I understand small towns and I understand why people live in them and I respect why they do.

A small town is an extended family. In my granny's village all the old folks who were her childhood playmates told me curious stories of my great, great grandfather and about what an amazing rip my highly respectable, Victorian granny had been as as a girl; galloping her horse bareback through the fields and jumping the fences with her Celtic, auburn hair flaming in the breeze.

People in small towns know everything about their neighbors and they are liable to walk in unannounced into the middle of your house at anytime of the day or night... always by the kitchen door (the front door is only for funerals). They are always there for you when you need them because they are always there even when you don't need them and woe to you if you ever turn them away. You have to always stop in the street and say hello to everyone you meet and ask after everybody and their family's health... always. Every resident of a small town is a politician by birth and training.

There were people in my granny's town that had tried living in the city and didn't like it and the reasons they gave were all about being human. They didn't like how impersonal the city was, how nobody seemed to care much for anybody else and how nobody had any time for anything.

Here in Madrid, I spend my weekends near a mountain village an hour and a half away from town. The people in that village have the same feeling about each other as in my grandma's town. And to take it even farther away... I worked as a photojournalist in Israel for year in the 70's. I had a wonderful Israeli girlfriend who worked in a picture magazine and she came from an ultra-left wing, "Young Red Guards" kibbutz. We use to go there on weekends and all those folks, atheist, Polish Stalinists, were just like the folks in my granny's village.

Everything is known instantly. Once when I was about ten, I was hanging out with my little friends in store when a guy running for state senate came in. I talked him into buying us all bottles of pop and candy bars and when he said for me to tell my parents to vote for him, I said they voted in Chicago. In a week it was all over the county that he had been slickered by a little city kid. His career was ruined. The country is about weighing and judging. The opinion of your peers is the most important thing in life in a small town.

Now to church and guns and aversion to the "other".

Church: There are some people in villages who are religious, I'm sure, but no more than other place. Believe me, people in small towns go to church because small town life is a performance and you have to seen in church. My granny told me that if I ever went to live in a small town, the church would be where I would find a job and make new friends. She also said the first thing to do was to check out the graveyard and memorize the surnames and which ones had expensive family crypts, that way I would learn who was who without asking too many nosy questions.

Guns: My granny's village is between the Illinois and the Mississippi rivers and the duck hunting is fantastic and the men used to go out all season. And as a child I plucked many a duck. A dead mallard is a beautiful thing to hold in your hand and pull the feathers off. Occasionally they are good to eat. Another thing that men and women who had returned from the city said they missed so much was the outdoor life. Do they "cling" to their guns? You bet! Ever try to kill a duck with a slingshot?

The "other": As I stated at the beginning, a village is an extended family and outsiders of any kind are like house guests; who are said to be like fish: after a couple of days they stink. The only reason I could mingle freely, was because my grandma was born in the village and the graveyard was filled with my DNA going back a hundred years. The definition of "home" as a place they have to let you into, comes to mind. Certainly if the stranger is here to lower the dollar per hour, it is perfectly legitimate to resent it. This, I believe is what the Marxists used to call a "contradiction".

Also country people know how to do a lot of cool stuff. Check out how the beautiful farmer's daughter above is controlling the sheep with her legs while smiling at the photographer.

Obama's was a real, dumb remark. I still don't understand how he could be that dumb. DS

The Turdblossom weighs in

David Seaton's News Links

Karl Rove is the acknowledged master of the dark arts. When he was in the White House, his thoughts were highly filtered and only sold under the counter to clients with "special tastes".

Now he writes in the Wall Street Journal and his political pornography is retailed and available to all.

In todays WSJ he reveals a detailed blueprint of what is going to be the Republican campaign if Barack Obama, as seems likely, takes the nomination.

Taint pretty, but it's worth looking at.

Here are some excerpts:

And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are "bitter" and therefore "cling" to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia? Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama's call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King's "fierce urgency of now" in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their too-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Mr. Obama is near victory in the Democratic contest, but it is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

Every word is filled with meaningful menace . every paragraph holds the germs of dozens of attack ads. For me the most menacing is the last sentence quoted that is the summing up of all that precedes it:

His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.

No vulgar Swiftboating here... yet... just a deadly game plan based on the simple deflation of a balloon.

Here are the basic Rovian talking points

• Reborn Adlai Stevenson (A wonderful man, actually, but considered the quintessential wimp)
  

• San Francisco and Hyde Park (sinister centers of wimpish, low-calorie food and un-American sentiments)
  

• For 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America's chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? (By November 4th, Reverend Wright will have become an American icon)
  

• He has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle (that's true)
  

• He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president (another valid point)
  

A very complete menu.

Like I said before, every talking point could spawn a dozen attack ads and blogger's agendas.

Personally, unless McCain has a stroke or a heart attack during the campaign, if he runs against Obama, I think he will be taking candy from a baby.

If he runs against Hillary...

Well, ask Obama what that is like. DS

The middle class

Income inequality in the US is at its highest since that most doom-laden of years: 1929. Throughout the main English-speaking economies, earnings disparities have reached extremes not seen since the age of The Great Gatsby.(...) From a political perspective the notable feature of the inegalitarian, free-market era that began in the 1980s is how little backlash there has been against the stagnation of ordinary people's earnings in such a large portion of the developed world economy. Yet there are signs that the mix of policies and economic circumstances that gave a protracted laisser-passer to the rich and to business is coming to an end. This is potentially dangerous territory. For as Bill Gross, managing director of Pimco, the world's biggest bond fund, has argued: "When the fruits of society's labour become maldistributed, when the rich get richer and the middle and lower classes struggle to keep their heads above water as is clearly the case today, then the system ultimately breaks down; boats do not rise equally with the tide; the centre cannot hold."
John Plender - Financial Times

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The center of American politics is its "middle class". Most observers would not have any problem agreeing that America's greatest contribution to the world's political discourse has been the creation of a large, satisfied, middle class: all of America's social stability depends on that class's satisfaction.

We use the words "middle class" all the time and most American's would define themselves as middle class. What is "middle class", really?

First, lets get clear what upper middle class is. In my definition these are people who have layers of property, relatives other than their parents die and leave them things. They own income producing properties other than the home they live in. They can educate their children out of their current income, without giving up anything, etcetera, etcetera. It is as if their blood had a high helium content and they never quite touched the ground. This is not the middle class I am talking about.

The middle class that most Americans believe they belong to is a transitory place on a voyage from some place harder and more difficult than the present to someplace softer and less difficult. It is place of anxiety, what it is not, or what it could be, is often more important than what it actually is: a loss of momentum may have disastrous and dreaded results. Without an adequate social net most middle class Americans are only a serious illness or a layoff away from traveling downward. Examples of that voyage surround them everywhere they look... if they dare to look.

Perhaps the most self-satisfied, self-portrait of America's middle class in the history of cinema is William Wyler's 1946 classic, "The Best Years of Our Lives", whose poster tops these lines. It is accurate in its portrayal of American's mental image of themselves as they returned from the war and looked forward to peace and the end of the hard times that all had known before the war. There is nothing smug about the film: the characters and the action show "normal" people living their lives.

The film won seven Oscars, including "best film". It was a huge success.

Americans paid money, laughed and cried in pleasure to see themselves being themselves. "The Best Years of Our Lives" was a love song to ourselves that we sung to ourselves.

I can't think of any such self-celebration possible today.

Below the classic poster from 1946, I have put together a mash up of some of the figures from contemporary films who take the place of Myrna Loy, Frederic March and Dana Andrews, populating the dreams of today's movie goers.

It would seem that to engage their fantasy and prosper, you would have to be a magician, or have special powers... or be a robot.

Without getting too far off into cocktail party sociology. Americans today do not appear to see a clear and hopeful path to travel without a cloak of invisibility or the power to levitate.

In my opinion either laissez faire globalization will destroy America's "The Best Years of Our Lives", middle class -- if it hasn't already -- or America's surviving middle class will destroy laissez faire globalization. It's anybody's guess who will win. DS

Working the basics II

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When I was in junior high, I had this wonderful science teacher, Mr. Lazlo, a very vocational teacher who was always finding creative ways of teaching. He even let me turn in my homework in comic book form. I adored him.

One spring Mr. Lazlo brought an incubator to class filled with fertilized chicken eggs. Every day we would cut open one of the eggs and examine the development of the fetuses.

Day by day we saw the fascinating change from a clot of blood to something that looked more like a chicken.

Everyday we killed a baby chick for this.

Finally the day came for the surviving baby chicks to hatch.

Little holes began to appear in the shells as the chicks tried to peck their way out.

When the chicks were managing to get their heads free of the shell, Mr. Lazlo suggested that we help some of the chicks get out of the shell and let the others get out the best they could.

The ones we helped soon died. Apparently the act of getting out of the shell was a vital part of their development.

Discuss. DS

Working the basics

David Seaton's News Links

It has been my experience that one of the most useful ways of taking apart a problem is to start with the simplest, most obvious things. Nothing is too obvious and humble not to be worth intense examination and rumination, till it yields its substance. Sherlock Holmes did little else

Conclusions arrived at trying to make sense of the most basic and obvious facts are solid and difficult for sophists to refute.

So If we are going to follow Confucius's advice and "rectify names" and reinvigorate our vocabulary we probably should start by having a clear idea of the most basic truths about our species.

For example:

Human beings are made up of about 66% water, which is considerably less than American beer, but still quite a lot. Sweating and peeing take their daily toll, so that water lost must be replaced: expert opinion has it that,

To maintain a high level of health and efficiency even in ideal environments, a minimum of two quarts of clean water per day per person is the generally accepted rule of thumb. In very hot or cold or very dry environments, or if you are physically active, two quarts of water a day may not be enough to sustain life over a period of days or weeks.

I think its important to meditate on that passage, because as the BBC says,

Two-fifths of the world's people already face serious shortages, and water-borne diseases fill half its hospital beds. People in rich countries use 10 times more water than those in poor ones. The present is dire: the future looks so grim it must be entirely unmanageable. Cut it how you will, the picture that emerges from today's data and tomorrow's forecasts is so complex and appalling it can leave you feeling powerless. The world cannot increase its supply of fresh water: all it can do is change the way it uses it. Its population is going to go on increasing for some time before there is any prospect it will stabilize.(...) Because the world's water supply is finite, most of life's other necessities are finite as well. In China it takes 1,000 tonnes of water to grow one tonne of wheat. If we do not learn to live within our aqueous means, we shall go hungry as well as thirsty. A world where consumption was a means to survival, not an economic end in itself, would have enough water to go round. And polluted, inadequate water might kill its children a little more slowly. (emphasis mine)

And after water comes food. As I'm sure you have read, there is a severe world food shortage at the moment. Here is how Caritas describes it:

Across the developing world there are only eight to 12 weeks of cereal stocks left and grain supplies are at their lowest since the 1980s. The UN World Food Programme has issued an urgent appeal for $500 million to respond to the dramatic increase in food and fuel prices. Rioting in response to massive food price increases has broken out in countries as diverse as Egypt, Bolivia, Indonesia and Senegal. Violent unrest in Haiti spread to the capital after protesters stormed the presidential palace last week, demanding that the government lift taxes on rice and beans. At least five people were killed . In a country where 80% of people earn less than £1 a day, the price of basic foodstuffs has soared by more than 50% since last year. Only Somali and Afghanistan have a higher per capita daily deficit in calorie intake than Haiti. The food crisis in Haiti is so intense that there is a real danger that the government and United Nations forces will not be able to maintain security if food aid is not stepped up in the very near future. Prospery Raymond, the Christian Aid country representative, said: "The country is at the beginning of a major crisis and there is a real risk of more political violence." He said: "A major contributing factor to the current food shortages are the neo-liberal economic policies that have been required by donor countries." (emphasis mine)

Of course, not everybody is complaining. Here is how "The Street" sees it:

With about 40% of the world's agricultural land seriously degraded and oil prices at record levels, prices of feed poultry and dairy cows are causing prices of wheat, soybean and maize to skyrocket. With overall crop outputs lagging demand, desperate farmers who wish to capitalize off record prices are now using a wide array of organic and inorganic fertilizers to help boost production. With this in mind, we have set up a World Food Shortage Plays portfolio on Stockpickr.com to help develop stock ideas to capitalize off this global trend. (emphasis mine)

So the basic idea would be that, since human beings have to eat and drink in order to live, any system that keeps a great number of human beings from doing that or that benefits from their misfortune, could be considered an enemy of humanity.

I think that this is called, "arguing from first principals", but, I cannot see that this conclusion is an oversimplification. DS