A major story on CNN.com is, “’Mad Men’ star’s hair is ‘bane of my existence.’” The Fox News front page promises Glenn Beck on the “Washington State Christmas Scandal.”
Economists fear deflation, and depression. Two of the Big Three automakers may not survive through the end of the year.
The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker writes about a 27 year-old, Facebook, and a Hillary Clinton cardboard cutout. Jackson Diehl luxuriates in a bubblebath of quid pro quo and self-congratulations for his attendance at a Bush photo-op.
Food stamp usage nears an all-time high with more than31.5 million Americans using the program. Americans are losing their livelihoods and having trouble buying food to eat.
I sense a disconnect.
The country is in serious trouble and a significant segment of the mainstream press hasn’t got a clue how to handle it. They appear tone-deaf and increasingly trivial. During the bubble years, the press learned to hawk self-promotion, triviality and political boosterism as “journalism.” They became insiders, members of a ruling court, not detached observers or, heaven forbid, muckrakers. They shed the ink-stained wretch image and became privileged, cosmetically altered insiders, intimate with power and happy to knead that intimacy into power of their own.
During the Clinton years, a lot of journalism became a gossipy exercise in snark and sniffy outrage. With 9/11 and The Bush ascension, the profession morphed into a jingoistic orgy of access amplification—who knew the highest ranking who fromwhom to get the latest, probably deceptive administration spin.
The rest of us put up with it. During the Bubble Years, weren’t we all destined to be rich? Just watch that high-tech 401k grow 27% a year; get that “liar” loan and watch your home value double. We all identified with wealth and power; we dreamt we’d have it. We weaned a whole generation on that illusion. Politics reduced to celebrity gossip and international affairs to jingoistic sound bites—it suited us fine. We were untouchable.
Even 9/11, through which we might have examined our place in the world and our exercise of power within it, instead led us to pull further inward, to howl not only at the guilty, but at the whole world. We were like kings insulted by peasants, desperate to re-establish might. So we broke things.
Now, suddenly, the prospect of plenty disappears; government actions have actual consequences—and not just for anonymous foreigners in godforsaken deserts. One congressional bill might mean the difference between having a job and not—between keeping your house and homelessness. But much of the mainstream press—particularly the television press from which most of us get our news—don’t adequately address this. They don’t do the hard work ofexplaining why this is happening or how it might be stopped or where it might end. They shake and shimmy to the gossip and the spin. They are so obsessed with their roles as insiders and removed from the lives we lead that they continue to partner with the powerful as spin conduits (The Washington Post's Frank Ahrens rehashed the old right wing wish for Mitt Romney as “car czar” because “he has autos in his DNA,” since his father was chairman of American Motors. Obviously, it’s his birthright, like a throne), or desperately clutch a sensational local story like the Blagojevich affair and construct hypothetical Rube Goldberg-like connections to the president-elect to justify their excessive, prurient interest.
The press doesn’t know how to handle our descent into darkness; and neither do we. We’restill in denial. Just as the financial kings Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson have attacked this crisis piecemeal—‘let’s throw a little money here to handle this part, a little interest rate adjustment there to handle that part’—we’re not acknowledging the big picture. Our eyes have been so blinded by 20 years of bright and shiny things that we can’t fathom an America generally re-cast in sepia and gray.
But yes, the next job on the chopping block might be mine or yours. Your credit cards might readjust to 26% for no reason. Next year’s health insurance bill might rise 30%. The fire department might not come when you call due to crisis-induced layoffs. How many of us acknowledge that we might be sustaining ourselves with food stamps?
We haven’t seen the worst of this. We hear that again and again. Obama keeps telling us, but gas prices fall and we convince ourselves that all will be well. Blagojevich kindly distracts us with sleaze. The Fox News dancing girls dazzle us with smiles and the pundits gossip and chatter at one another as if there’s nothing more substantive to say or do.
Our dreams, along with our toys, are vanishing. The press and the public pretend not to notice. The first stage of grieving is denial. We’re doing such a damned good job of it, I dread the day we get to anger.TIP:
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Comments
I'm not in denial but abject fear. Perhaps that explains the ostrich behavior of the media and all around us.
And as you point out indirectly and are to professional to say . . . I and those like me are stupid.
It seems like a large network such as that created by the Obama campaign could promote what jobs there are and share what resources (food, housing etc.) that we have left. But of course I'm promoting Internet socialism.
That particular 27 year old is the head speech writer for the President elect and the cut out is of Senator Clinton. In the photo he is fondling her breast while another young man pantomimes pulling her head back and pouring beer down her throat. It is offensive on many levels and should have received more coverage, not less. That young man should be fired or if Senator Clinton is feeling merciful, he should be put to work for her at the State Department after her confirmation.
(rated)
excellent post. i read in the LA Times a dozen years ago that dan rather said this at a conference for journalists, "until the american people demand real news, we will keep leading with michael jackson stories."
in other words, the news outlets our controlled by the advertisers and if we start demanding in depth reporting rather than silly sound bites with "dancing girls" like you mention, we will continue getting fluff.
if you've ever lived overseas, the news coverage is not like this. even cnn international is more ballsy. most folks can watch the bbc on pbs. now at least the bbc gives us about ten minutes on a story. not a silly sound bite. they also give us stronger images.
thanks for the post. and i am paying attention leonce. and there are many of us out there paying attention. do not lose all hope yet.:) lets start a revolution.....demanding real news.:)
mary
Lifting the veil of denial is something to which I hope President Obama dedicates his entire first State of the Union Address.
Not everybody will like it, but I've come to believe he's more interested in what we need than what we want.
(Note to self: Re-watch "They Live.")
It's all about selling ink and upping the ratings these days. The deal with Illinois Governor is news worthy, but compared to the atrocities of the last eight years, it pales by comparison. Then the desperate need to connect Obama to some kind of scandal about it makes me want to puke. It's all smoke and mirrors. If you don't have facts you're just making up crap.
I totally agree with Dorinda, I'm scared to death. I've lived through recessions starting in '74 and was always able to find work. Not so this time.
We've got half the media doing the"OMG, Jennifer Aniston naked in a tie" stories.... and the other half doing the dire "depression is coming" story.
Have you looked at the box office sales last month?
-- Nov 07 weekend: Madagascar:$63.11 million
-- Nov 14 weekend: Quantum of Solace: $67.53 million
-- Nov 21 weekend: Twilight: $69.6 million
-- Nov 28 weekend: Four Christmases: $31 million
Each of these figures represents ticket sales IN 48 HOURS.
Who is spending this money?? We are.
Have you seen the lineups every time a new game system or ipod or other toy is released? I won't even get into the Walmart incident, which was totally fueled by salivating greed glands.
Take 100 average people and ask them to explain how compound interest works and 95 of 100 can't do it.
Ask them to calculate what that $500 must have toy will actually cost if they put it on their credit card with 18% compound interest and make minimum payments. They can't tell you because they don't know.
Did you know that bankruptcy rates soar right after Christmas every year?
Ask any adult to multiply their annual salary by the number of years they have worked and then explain why they are in debt. Damn, that's depressing. Who would want to do that??
IMHO, the problem isn't so much that people aren't admitting we "have" a problem, but that we "are" the problem.
Or maybe it's worse than that. Maybe people DO know they are the problem, but they prefer to play ostrich. It's easier to go watch another movie and laugh at the dancing girls and mock celebrities than to face up to what we are creating for ourselves.
So, as Dan Rather puts it, the media gives us what we consume.
They don't even have to guess what we want. They just need to look at their stats and give us more of what we're clicking on.
The media isn't to blame here. They're out to make a profit, same as every other corporate entity. That is, at least for now, the prime directive of a corporation; to make a profit for it's shareholders.
Change starts with us, not them. If we taught basic finance in high school, that would be a good start.
Just my opinion, of course.
While the public may not acknowledge mainstream media's disservice, I think the economy's sinking depths and its glaring implications for individuals have propelled many to do the "hard work" the media won't do. For example, although Citibank dispatched a letter detailing ammendments to my credit card agreement, a better explanation came from a MarketWatch article.
In everything
That's how the light gets in..."
That's Leonard Cohen describing, (my interpretation) the difficulty of understanding the scope of change descending upon us (written well before Obama's election.) With paradigm change, the unnecessary will fall away as leaves off a tree as we seek that which truly nurtures and sustains us. I don't think we will find what we need in newspapers or television. We need each other and the internet has opened new pathways for finding each other. Frightening to accept that the institutions which have supposedly "kept an eye on things" for us are crumbling, but they are. The responsibility now falls on us more directly. And perhaps that is the light shining through the crack.
Jimmymac's got the most poetic and optimistic take on the tanking economy, and I like that. We're Americans afterall, darn it. And if the sky is falling, I want to at least be able to see it light through the trees as it approaches.
As for the economy, that is another issue. What can we do except hunker down and expect several years of this, with the depression as the closest model? Meanwhile, make the most of life in simple ways and stay connected.
As someone who used to work in the media I agree that the slide from news to fluff and the complete intermingling of the two is now a fait accompli. I don't think that journalists are any more likely now to cosy up to the powerful than they used to be; the real problem is that there is absolutely no incentive other than moral imperative for a journalist to seek and write the truth. Most media outlets, even some established online ones, do not exactly encourage journalists to rattle the cages of the powers that be. Remember, "the media" is made up of individuals, most of whom want to keep their jobs, and going against the best interests of their owners' usually right-wing agenda spells unemployment.
That doesn't deter everyone fortunately, but it's the kind of chill that gives pause. As for TV "news," I stopped taking it seriously years ago. I haven't watched Fox in years, nor do I intend to start any time soon. I don't live in the US but it does always amaze me how limited and biased the coverage is there compared to other countries in the industrialized world. The rest of the world seems to exist only as a target, or a foil. It's oft said, but the ignorance of a lot of Americans about basic geography and other countries still astounds and disturbs me.
It's up to people to educate themselves about world events by reading in depth, whether online or in newspapers, about the world they live in. The lack of willingness to take any responsibility for good citizenship or simply being a well-informed human being is a huge part of what's wrong, and why so many accept faux "news"and the constant use of unsubstantiated anonymous sources as fact.
There was a time not so long ago when the average person read a newspaper every day and what was in it, worthwhile or otherwise, was discussed at the breakfast or dinner table. We DO get the media and the government we deserve.
Some in the critical thinking field will say that it's not that we can't handle the truth, but more that we are inadaquate in critically thinking our way to the truth. For this reason a group of major corporations http://21stcenturyskills.org, are calling for our education system to teach critical thinking (plus the other 21st century skills). And in the process they have sparked the dawning of the Age of Critical Thinking. And it's happening all around the world.
Consider this excerpt from the 2006 report, 21st Century Skills, Education & Competitiveness, by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills:
The nation needs to do a much better job teaching and measuring advanced, 21st century skills that are the indispensible currency for participation, achievement and competitiveness in the global economy. Beyond the assessment of reading, mathematics and science, the United States does not assess other essential skills that are in demand in the 21st century. All Americans, not just an elite few, need 21st century skills that will increase their marketability, employability and readiness for citizenship, such as:
• Thinking critically and making judgments about the barrage of information that comes their way every day—on the Web, in the media, in homes, workplaces and everywhere else.Critical thinking empowers Americans to assess the credibility, accuracy and value of information, analyze and evaluate information, make reasoned decisions and take purposeful action.
They're just giving the customer what they want.
People do not want hard news. They want fluff.
Here's a perfect example. At work, we get the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. Those go in the break room.
I usually take my break late, so that means the papers have been gone through by my coworkers by the time I get there.
Know what I find?
The Journal is untouched. The Post has been taken apart, but the front page and the business section are pretty much pristine. Same with the Times.
Instead, the sports section and the style and lifestyle sections are dogeared and chewed up. And there are a ton of tabloid trash magazines which have been read to the point where the pages are stuck together and pages are torn.
It's like people are proud of their ignorance. I guarantee you that if you say CDS or CDO around most people, they'll think you're talking about something you put music on, not the things that brought down Lehman and AIG.
It doesn't help that even the people who try to explain what these things are can't get the name right. On the Ron Reagan show, there was someone trying to explain what a CDS is. Only instead of calling it a credit default swap, which is the proper term, he kept on calling it a credit derivative swap, which it is not.
Given this kind of disinterest in important things and ignorance, why would it surprise you that the media puts out fluff? It's all the general public wants.
Great piece.
rated
i thought for a while, why would anyone want to be president now?
but obama is smart enough to know that "crisis' is an amalgam of danger and opportunity, as the chinese ideograph encapsulates.
a year from now, he may be able to take america whereever he wants. i hope it's democracy. not holding my breath, though.
America's substantial resources are being squandered because of the morbid notion that need represents a claim on worth. We've somehow got it into our pink little minds that America's producers have a responsibility to the needy, the irresponsible, the parasitic, and now, even to the violent (assuming, of course, that the violence can be traced back to American "imperialism"). If this premise is allowed to grow, it will bankrupt not just G.M., but the U.S. as a whole.
A major cause of the present economic crisis was political pressure that was brought to bear on banks to make loans to the credit unworthy. If the philosophers had been doing their job, this would have been clipped in the bud as irrational and contrary to the concepts of rational self interest. The whole concept of bailout, which is going to be the death of us, would have never arisen. Instead, the whole mess, admittedly furthered by Bush and Paulson, became a feeding frenzy for corrupt politicians like Dowd, Frank, Pelosi, and Reid, our current leaders, god forbid. We're now living with the results.
Add to this the "green machine" and you've got real trouble. Again, the dance is being called not by producers who, left unfettered are perfectly capable of coming up with scientific counterpoints to whatever hazards may really exist (and they've been grossly exaggerated by disheartened political hacks who need a cause to justify their continued existence), but rather by politicians and media fanatics who couldn't care less about the damage they're doing to the country.
Correct philosophical premises take years to transmogrify into rational political and social action. We may have waited too long. As much as I wish our newbie prez well, any notion that he can bring a philosophical perspective to his duties is wishful thinking given his liberal brainwashing at Columbia and Harvard and his entrenched ties to one of the most corrupt and meretricious political machines in recent history. And, in a larger sense, it's really not his responsibility as much as it is that of serious philosophical thinkers whose voice can barely be heard over the din of media-enforced collectivist political thinking.
What bothers me, Leonce, is the disconnect almost the entire citizenry has with them. We are, unfortunately, a intellectually lazy citizenry—and never has that laziness been more inappropriate.
I don’t like being negative like this; I am known as a pie-eyes optimist by all my friends. But my feelings on our economic situation are as bleak as a London fog.
I just finished a five part series here in OS which had as a major premise: “There will NEVER EVER again be enough decent paying jobs available for all the people who need and/or want one.” By the end of the series, I refined that thought into a more easily understood: “There’s only so much work it makes sense to pay humans to do, particularly if you intend to pay them a living wage for doing it. There is going to be even less of it available next year—and less the year after that!”
That thought, Leonce, is a part of the truth Americans cannot handle. Frankly, I don’t know that anybody can. Too bad, that, because that truth is at the root of every problem you mentioned in your blog except the one about the Hillary Clinton cardboard cutout.
Folks, our species just spent 50,000 years scratching its way up from flint chippings to silicon chips in an effort to get to where we are right now—a point where our technology, our computers, robots, and other machines, are making our personal toil more or less irrelevant to the effort required to provide the needs and accouterments of life. Unfortunately our success has been so great and has come so suddenly that we are mistaking it for a problem—a series of problems actually, most of which Leonce enumerated in his blog comments.
The real problem—the problem that was not included, is that we have no leaders or wanna-be leaders willing to see our situation not as a problem, but as a blessing. We have the makings of much, much more free time for everyone—giving everyone a chance to do the things we’d rather be doing than working, which, I needn’t point out could include working on projects that might just help the human condition a whole bunch. When is the last time you heard a politician promise to take advantage of our great technological creativity to create more leisure time for everyone? Don’t bother thinking, the answer is NEVER! They’re too busy promising to create more jobs for us—a promise they have absolutely no chance of fulfilling.
What we are doing in this economy is the economic equivalent of fucking up a great orgasm!
We ought all to be ashamed of ourselves!
Here's another Leonard Cohen song lyric that describes my feeling about the era to come.
Democracy
It's coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It's coming from the feel
that this ain't exactly real,
or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming through a crack in the wall;
on a visionary flood of alcohol;
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don't pretend to understand at all.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin'
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst.
It's here the family's broken
and it's here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It's coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we'll be making love again.
We'll be going down so deep
the river's going to weep,
and the mountain's going to shout Amen!
It's coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on ...
I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can't stand the scene.
And I'm neither left or right
I'm just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
that Time cannot decay,
I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
I am afraid of the upcoming crash. Most people do not get it, nor will they until it's possibly too late. However, I feel that the possibility for us to progress through this painful political and social adolescent fixation on things ahead of people exists, and the future AFTER we repair the broken things, may still be bright.
Sorry to be long-winded.
- e.
Excellent post.
There are some pockets of competence in the media, but they are hard to find. Surprisingly, 60 Minutes tonight had a piece about mortgage defaults that drew a very unambiguous picture about how much worse default rates are going to get... but if you had thrown a brick through the screen when Leslie Stahl paused from throwing Republican talking points at Barney Frank to *pout* when he said that television news was lacking in nuance, you'd have missed it. (I didn't have a brick.)
I was struck by Frank Apisa's comment because it was the positive version of a conversation I had with my parents (who are visiting) about the permanently unemployed in the UK, particularly around the former industrial centers in Glasgow. My father's point was that people get upset about paying for life-long unemployed because the UK has never adjusted its policies to account for the fact that never mind globalization, mechanization (in farming) and automation (in manufacturing) has reduced the need for what used to be unskilled labor... there's simply nothing for these folks to do. I wonder if the years of consumption-driven growth and employment have been concealing the same problem on this side of the Atlantic.
As usual, they're bullcrap.
Gordon, do you know what the default rate is on CRA loans?
The answer is a hell of a lot lower than the default rate on Alt-A and other liar loans.
You want to blame the mess on trying to get poor people into houses? Feel free, except as is the case in most situations with right wing nut job talking points, it's based on total bullcrap.
The meltdown in housing wasn't caused by the CRA. It was caused by doofuses who bought in to the notion that they could just refinance their house because it would only go up in value. It was caused by people who couldn't afford a traditional loan on a $500K house who wanted it anyway and the "free market" capitalists at Citi and Lehman who came up with CDOs. Of course, those "free market" capitalists have now received more money in government investments than Karl Marx would have dreamed of giving anyone.
But go on, keep on blaming it on the poor and the CRA and politicians.
It's bullcrap, but it will help let you live in your little fantasy world.
but...like Dorinda & others, I suffer less from denial but from fear, and I tend to think it's worse the more I pay attention to the media. (not Fox, certainly, but actual business news)
Even economists and analysts who study these things can't seem to agree on the full extent of the crisis, the core reasons for it, and/or the best way to see it through. It's enough to make my head explode.
In the meantime, growing one's own vegetables, cutting off the cable and stockpiling the canned goods isn't such a bad idea.
I assume that the flaming is an attempt to distract from the bankruptcy of his argument. That would be the most charitable interpretation.
You wrote: “Of course, the country is in deep peril, maybe more so than at any other time I can recall. But the primary cause is not the corrupt politicians that rule our lives, mostly Democrats it seems, not the media which panders to public taste and Democrat politicains it seems, but rather the abdication of philosophers.”
Not sure where you have been for the last three or four decades, Gordon…but America has been solidly in the hands of conservatives for almost all that time. In fact, from the time of Richard Nixon, America (with minor, but notable exceptions) has pretty much been abandoned by liberals…especially liberal politician. And while you may not be aware of this, American conservatism is almost totally controlled by the Republican Party…not the Democratic Party.
Conservative thought, values, and ideals have just about dominated the American landscape for the last 40 plus years.
Not sure where all that “Democrats this” and “Democrats that” stuff you are selling is coming from, Gordon, but if you are using that as the basis for the observations you are making and the suggestions you are offering…your observations and suggestions ought rightfully to be fully ignored.
I don’t want to do that. I’d rather treat you and your comments seriously.
Any chance I can get you to regroup…and offer something that doesn’t start with a totally fictional, grossly self-serving set-up?
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/print/200812/financial-bubbles
Not necessary to regroup, but rather to restate, perhaps with more clarity. The reference to Democrats was a comment on the current scene. It can hardly be doubted that during the recent presidential campaign, the mainstream media was clearly biased in favor of Obama and other Democrats. It is equally clear that the current crop of scoundrels consists mostly of Democrats. These two trends meld in the fact that many media reports of our illustrious Illinois governor failed to mention that he was a Democrat.
On a broader level, my point, perhaps not clearly enough stated, was that politicians of both parties operate strictly from expediency with no thought to philosophical principles. Surely one of these principles is that the initiation of physical force is uncivilized, whether it be the 9/11 attacks or shoe-throwing by some savage at a news conference. Bush himself abandonned this principle when he attacked Iraq in the absence of demonstrable evidence that Iraq was a responsible party in the 9/11 attack.
To say that conservatism has dominated and failed is to equate, wrongly I submit, conservatism with Republicanism and to give the term a political rather than a philosophical connotation. Bush and most Republican leaders have so far abandonned conservatism that it's currently not a matter of whether one is conservative or liberal, but rather only how liberal you are. The left has clearly become the center.
I repeat my point that it is unlikely that politicians of either stripe can reestablish a philosophical basis from which our great country can get back on track, and the mainstream media will clearly be of no help.
I appreciate the rational tone of your post. I hope I have returned the favor with a respectful response.
Since you are here in the lion's den, I think you can do us a favor. You distance conservatism from Republicanism. Looking at the Reagan and Bush years, I equate their policies with both. You state that such an equation is not valid. Can you then explain your view of conservatism? I am sincerely interested.
I am appalled at the massive amount of "who, what, when, where, and why" is left out of journalism these days. Most of the crap seems to be stream-of-conscious or opinion driven drivel.
It's often unreadable!
I do hope that the Obama administration can get a WPA type of infrastructure repair program started, and shut down the insane reimbursement of speculative investment gamblers. And stop this wasteful, expensive, already lost war!
It is us who must send a clear message to the so-called "journalists" that we aren't stupid, and won't "take it any more"! As for Jon Stewart and Keith Olbermann, they get out more of the substance of the days events than most, even cloaked in the satire.
But then, good satire requires the facts, viewed through a lot of intelligence, and satire assumes that the recipient is also intelligent enough to "get the gist of it".
I absolutely commit to rational, respectful discourse on this issue. I think it is an issue of primary importance to America…and to the world. I’m delighted that Leonce brought it up…and that you have engaged. Although I will speak frankly and directly (the only way I opoerate), I will do so within the confines of that commitment. If during this discussion I feel the need to go ape-shit (something that happens once in a while with me)…I will courteously disengage from the discussion rather than break the commitment.
I want to get to a specific issue you raised, Gordon, but first, “truth in lending” (so to speak) requires that I mention two items:
One, I disagree with several elements of your remarks about Democrats, media biases, conservatives, and Republicans. Leonce’s questions go to some of the issues I have with your thought in those areas, so I will leave this area be for the time being.
Two, so that I am not hiding my personal biases, although I am not a liberal, I consider American conservatism to be one of the vilest contaminants ever to pollute planet Earth…and I think the latest trend (evidenced in some of your remarks) to suggest that all the corruption and pus that is such an integral part of American conservatism is somehow outside the mainstream of that philosophy—is disingenuous and shameful. Frankly, Gordon, if you were to take the racists, misogynists, hypocritical Christians, and what is sometimes referred to as “simple-minded po’ white trash”—out of the aggregate, American conservatives, the kind holding what you might call true conservative principles (the non-abandoning type), would be able to hold national conventions in a telephone booth.
In short, without inclusion of some of the scum of the earth, there is no American conservatism.
With that out of the way, let me get to that one specific point so that we can start the dialogue.
You wrote: “America's substantial resources are being squandered because of the morbid notion that need represents a claim on worth. We've somehow got it into our pink little minds that America's producers have a responsibility to the needy, the irresponsible, the parasitic, and now, even to the violent (assuming, of course, that the violence can be traced back to American "imperialism"). If this premise is allowed to grow, it will bankrupt not just G.M., but the U.S. as a whole.”
I’d like to discuss that for a bit in its abstract form—and it is only fair that I mention that this kind of thinking is one of the major reasons why I am so repulsed by the conservative focus.
By the way, all of my closest friends (and many of my relatives) are conservatives and I love them all dearly. Please don’t regard any of my remarks about conservatism as an attack on any conservative…especially you. We are discussing a philosophy here.
But back to your statement. Let’s see if I can make a case allegorically for why I think this kind of thinking is so demeaning to humanity.
If I were standing on a street corner—and an unexpected rain shower hit—and I had a huge golf umbrella in my possession—and (let’s make it) a little old woman were standing along side me, but without an umbrella…
…the logical extension of your line of thinking would say that I have absolutely no obligation in my little pink mind to offer her shelter from the storm. I was intelligent, resourceful, and lucky enough to have carried an umbrella…she was not intelligent enough, or resourceful enough, or lucky enough to have done do on her own. I could argue that although she is “needy” she showed appalling irresponsibility in not carrying an umbrella—and that her present need for shelter has the tang of a parasitic invasion to it. I could easily justify simply standing there warm and dry—and let her get soaked.
Or I could be a decent human being and hold the umbrella over both of us.
(If you are wondering—that is what I would do!)
I could even go further than that, though.
I could suggest that a personal philosophy (of the sort you mentioned in your first post) obligates me to care enough for my human beings so that the move to cover us both no longer is an arbitrarily voluntary thing…but is an obligation. My humanity obliges me to do it. And that I have a similar “obligation” toward all the other fellow human beings in lots of other areas.
I could, in fact, carry that personal philosophy to the point where I feel that kind of moral position should, by nature, be the moral position all humans should take toward all other human beings. And I can extend it even further by suggesting that the aggregate of all human beings who feel of like mind with me, by the strength of our combined influence in our republic, could and should require that the government feel and act in accordance with that philosophy…and that the industrial institutions that exist in our country, effectively at our pleasure, should conduct themselves, wherever possible, in that way also.
Okay…there is a lot here to ponder and kick around—and I don’t want to cover so much that a rational reply is compromised. I’ll pause here and listen to any response that comes back.
A summation of what I’ve said here might say: I agree that we have to operate from a consistent, principled philosophical position, Gordon, but I absolutely dread the kind of position towards which you seem to be headed.
(Hope we’re not hijacking or derailing your intent here, Leonce. If we are, give a yell and I’ll move this stuff elsewhere.)
Also, we are part of the problem. We do try to escape into movies and celebrity gossip. We aren't taught basic finance in school, and we don't demand that our children learn it. Most people are in debt before they graduate from college (or reach the age to) and stay in debt.
Many painful changes are headed our way.
Yes, the American media has totally and completely failed the public and the world, and I, for one, would be very nervous as a sell-out media personality, prostituting myself to corporations for a big salary.
Since the election, there's been far too much manufactured interest in the future of the GOP. Republicans have deliberately and willfully destroyed the economy, invaded Iraq for profit, delayed addressing global warming which will cost us all the more, on and on and on.......and yet, not one word about their mistakes, their failures, their lies and attacks!! Even when George admits on national TV that the "intelligence" he received on Iraq was incorrect, not a word from the media.....even though I can imagine what that statement meant to families who've lost a loved one in the Iraq war! But again, no "journalists" jumped all over that statement, which was interesting in one respect because it was the Bush family who more or less started the CIA after WW II in their eagerness to prove to the American government that they weren't Nazis after it was a Walker who headed DeutscheBank during WW II and financed the Nazis. Remember when Bush, Sr. was head of the CIA back in the 1970s or thereabouts?
Obviously, wealthy Republicans control the media. Americans should TURN OFF the news in protest when it's nothing but silly fluff, send emails demanding real investigative journalism, etc........
Even more, living abroad for two and a half years changed my entire view of the US: I relearned most of our war history, realized that universal healthcare is possible without waiting lists and exorbitant taxes, the difference in society when education is ACTUALLY a priority instead of a piggy bank to remove money from when tax revenue decreases.
As you asked, I think you could do worse than reading Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater. The public roundly rejected this philosophy when Senator Goldwater was overwhelmingly defeated. Since then we've been suffering in varying degrees the consequences of creeping collectivism.
I have read the Goldwater, and now I believe I know what you mean by "philosophy." Unfortunately, I would have to call it "ideology." Being both black and gay, the conservative ideal of extreme federalism has no appeal to me. Had it been in place, I probably would have been unable to receive the education I received because my parents would not have been able to live in the neighborhoods in which they owned homes. Such a "philosophy" would have had an entirely detrimental effect on my life prospects and livelihood. I cannot believe in ideology for ideology's sake. I don't believe that any ideology holds all the answers. I fear it is naive to believe so. Charter schools work, so I applaud them. Capitalism is far more user-friendly than the alternatives, so I advocate it. Parliamentary systems make far more sense to me than our own, so I would prefer one.
I don't fear what you call "collectivism." I do not believe that the French or the British are living in communist hellholes. If some of their systems work, I would prefer them--regardless of the philosophy or "ideology" from which they spring.
Also, consider that the ones begging for money from the government are in the top 20% tax bracket - this creates for many a sense that it's not "us", but "them", that have a problem. And those who are having mortgage troubles took a calculated risk.
I'm trying to remember what the news coverage was like in the early 80s, which the media has been saying was the last really big recession. I was only 20 and working for an environmental group--managed to keep a few jobs--but they were minimum wage.
I can't tell if there is more or less coverage of our economic situation. (I don't now, and didn't back then, watch t.v. news, but I do listen to NPR and did back then as well.)
What do you folks think? Is the coverage different now than then?