Wolfgang von Skeptik

AN ANTHOLOGY OF WEEKEND READING

PRESIDENT BUSH'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS was the most disturbingly Orwellian political speech I have ever heard, this in at least 50 years of paying close and thoughtful attention to politics. As most readers know, I voted for Bush, albeit reluctantly: Islam has been at war with the "infidel" world for nearly14 centuries, and Kerry’s hopelessly dovish pledge to dismiss that onslaught as a mere crime problem was far more frightening than the re-election of a blundering hawk. But I miscalculated badly; I assumed the Democrats would hold onto enough seats in the Senate to continue obstructing the Republican Party’s 70-year assault on the social safety-net: a net that was wretchedly nonexistent until Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us working people what truly was a New Deal. In this context – with the destruction of the safety net now a virtual certainty – for Bush to cite "the dignity and security of economic independence" when what he really means is wage slavery, inescapable poverty and "what’s good for Wall Street is good for America" is the very nadir of Big Brother doublespeak. Meanwhile here is a report that suggests life in the New Herbert Hoover Economy will be even more savage than I anticipated. Hence I again apologize for my mistaken vote. I am truly sorry, to the point I feel as if I have grievously sinned and am now in dire need of absolution.

As far as I can tell, the methodical restoration of pre-New-Deal economic savagery is precisely what Bush’s second term is all about. While I don't buy the idiotic Far Left/Democratic Undertow paranoia that the Bush League started the war just to inflate the deficit – that claim is part of the very nonsense that makes the Left so repugnant to so many Americans (about which more in a moment) – I have no problem at all with the notion that Bush is deliberately following in the footsteps of President Ronald Reagan, whose runaway deficits were themselves an earlier Republican effort to destroy the social safety net. What checkmated Reagan was a Democratic Party that was well aware of what he was up to – a Democratic Party that by its control of Congress managed to keep America listed among the planet's more humanitarian nations rather than suffer the reduction of the American economy to the Hoover model: an industrialized version of the banana-republic, with an obscenely rich and powerful plutocracy riding herd over a vast and viciously oppressed workforce. That was America before and for about three years after the Crash of 1929 – why else was the Communist Party the third largest political organization in the nation? – and that is what America will become again if the Bush League has its way. "Ownership society" indeed – by, for and of the handful of owners, with the rest of us oppressed by the heart-stopping terror of constant economic insecurity and ever-looming destitution.

Not only did I vote wrong. I voted as an inadvertant traitor to my own class interests. Which brings me to...

TWO PAINFUL LESSONS IN ECONOMIC REALITY

Unless one is extremely wealthy, our economy is neither fair nor forgiving. This is not hyperbole, nor is it the lest bit theoretical. Here are two true stories of the economy from which the Bush League (in service to its Herbert Hoover ideology) wants to strip all our social safety nets – including Social Security pensions that even now are only semi-liveable:

My father's family was Old Money wealthy – private schools, sailboats and horses wealthy, though nowhere close to Rockefeller wealthy. But the Crash of '29 reduced my father and his widowed mother to abject poverty, so that instead of attending Gill University in Toronto, my father spent his elder youth driving a coal truck in Boston – and was reckoned among the lucky ones merely because he had a job at all. Years later my father had only just begin to enjoy (apparent) economic security when a series of mid-1960s mergers and monopolistic coups wiped out the mortgage banking business he had built from scratch and forced him to once again to rely on the manual labor skills he acquired during his youth. He died at age 61, putting in 18-hour days at an Esso station near Knoxville, Tennessee, owner, manager and chief mechanic.

My father and I were not close; indeed he despised me. But that has never blinded me to the fact he was as determined and diligent and fiscally responsible as a man can be – and that in the end our economy worked him to death as surely as if he were a field-slave on some Mississippi plantation.

In terms of economics, my own story is an eerily similar testament to the same American economic reality, though the circumstances themselves are profoundly different.

I began working for The Knoxville Journal in September 1957, a senior at Knox County’s Holston High School. For the next two years I was a sports stringer; I wrote football stories at $5 per game, and covered basketball, track and other sports for $2.50 per event. I enlisted in the Army in 1959, and when I returned from Korea in September 1962, it was to a full time job at The Journal as a sportswriter. I was obviously a valued employee, had been given two raises in six months, and was already discussing with my supervisors how I might eventually transfer from sports to hard news. Moreover, The Journal was a paper that often sent its employees on to much greater publications, including the New York City dailies. My career – or so I assumed – was launched; I was attending the University of Tennessee by day as a history major and I was working full-time at night. I was apolitical, focused on my own betterment to such an extent I was ignoring much of what was happening around me – including the Civil Rights Movement.

But on June 3, 1963, all that changed. I was swept up in the massive and utterly unjustified arrest of a group maliciously described by The Journal as "Forty negroes and whites, most of them students at the University of Tennessee..," though only about a half-dozen of us caught up in the sweep are black. I was arrested purely by accident; I was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But I was outraged by what I had witnessed: the unspeakably vicious behavior of the sheriff's deputies and Knoxville police officers – KuKlux-minded pigs to a man (some probably actual Klan members), all sewer-mouthed with racist invective. Hence in the incident's aftermath I vehemently protested both the unprovoked police brutality I had witnessed firsthand and the malevolently false police and sheriff's claims of a "drunken sex orgy," fulfillment of the vile and obscene Southron fantasies about “nigger-lovers” and “nigras and whites together.”

The truth and ultimate righteousness of everything I did and said was eventually upheld by the courts, but my commitment to that truth and above all else to my own personal honor (and the honor of the woman with whom I was arrested) not only cost me my job at The Journal but dealt my journalism career a wound from which it never recovered. It also ended forever any chance I might find other gainful or productive employment. From the perspective of too many future potential bosses, I had defied my employer (who by the way was an important Republican National Committeeman), and in the American workplace, such defiance is the one forever unforgivable sin. Hence despite my obvious talent I would never again be allowed to work for a major newspaper, would never amass a private-industry pension, would never even earn enough to purchase a pension on my own.

Hence too the inescapably ruinous blow dealt me by the fire in 1983: the two book-projects I had believed would nevertheless guarantee me some degree of old-age security were destroyed beyond recovery: notes, photographs and all. This was literally the work of a lifetime: I had labored on one of the books since 1967 (with informal beginnings in 1962), had collected information for the second book since 1972, and with not only my manuscripts and photographs but all my research notes in ashes, there was absolutely no possible way to reconstruct any of it.

Thus I am cursed to endure old age with no guaranteed income save Social Security. And even without Bush's proposal of slashing benefits nearly in half, Social Security – which was designed by FDR to save unfortunates like myself from living out our final years literally in the gutters and on the streets – is not nearly adequate. It is so woefully inadequate that even though I live in subsidized housing, I will literally have to work until I drop dead, just as my father did.

With the "let-them-eat-cake" attitude typical of the rich (whether Old Money or New Money it makes little difference), President George Bush once told his business professors that he believes people are poor only because they are lazy. But my father never enjoyed a day of laziness in all his adulthood. Nor did I: journalism is not just a job, it is a way of life, and I got into journalism by the old path, the traditional path – as a stringer and a copy boy, which meant many times the effort expended by those who slither into their jobs via journalism majors.

My determination to succeed never wavered even after I was repeatedly told that with the blemish of the Knoxville 40 incident on my record, no "serious" newspaper would ever again consider hiring me, no matter how formidable my reporting skills nor how exceptional my writing talent. As I would learn, this was indeed true. But I stupidly believed in the American dream: I kept at journalism in the sure conviction that – sooner or later – some editor at some major daily somewhere would finally decide I had done penance enough and grant me a proper job with reasonable pay and benefits. But that never happened. The one additional shot I did get at the proverbial brass ring – this via the efforts of a colleague – died stillborn: my 1985 appointment to a major wire-service editorship nullified (or so I was told) by quota-mongering feminists threatening a lawsuit against alleged gender discrimination. Though for all I know, what happened on June 3, 1963 may have been the real killer there, too. Finally clinical depression set in, theoretically triggered by the losses of the fire but probably a long-delayed reaction to everything else as well, and I could do journalism no more.

And now here I am doing journalism again, writing for a small special interest publication ...as always since June 3, 1963, producing very good work for almost unspeakably miserable pay.

Don’t misunderstand: I have nothing against the rich. I am not now nor have I ever been one of those bitterly envious malcontents who despises the rich merely for their wealth. I do not begrudge the rich anything, especially not their easy successes and their infinitely succored lives. I do not share the vindictive all-consuming jealousy that is yet another quality that rightfully makes the Left so repugnant to so many Americans. But it is one thing for the endlessly pampered son of a wealthy family to shallowly believe that those of us who are poor are impoverished merely because we are lazy. It is quite another thing for some reigning prince of plutocracy to attempt to enshrine such a viciously bigoted notion as a shibboleth of national policy. And that is precisely what George W. Bush is attempting to do – just as Ronald Reagan attempted before him.

My father was not poor because he was lazy. I am not poor because I was lazy. A friend who lost half his pension by administrative fiat did not lose it through laziness. The people who were victimized by Enron are not poor because they were lazy. Misfortunes happen. Discrimination happens. Viciousness happens. Markets crash. Enron-scale thievery becomes ever more the norm. Even at the best of times, far too many of us live only one or two paychecks from homelessness – not because we are benighted spendthrifts, but because two paychecks from homelessness is the only margin of safety the outrageously inflated cost of living allows us.

It was to protect us against just such disasters that FDR wove the very social safety nets the Bush League would now destroy.

But...

WHY DO PLUTOCRATS HATE THE SAFETY NET?

Decades ago, when there was a genuine American Left (rather than today's imbecilic pseudo-leftist faddists who spend all their time spitting in the faces of soldiers – for which see below – or chanting for "free abortion on demand"), it was common knowledge that what the American Plutocracy most hated about FDR and the New Deal boiled down to only two things:

(1)-The plutocrats wanted – and still want – an American workforce that is too intimidated to do anything but bow its collective head and submit to whatever oppression the lords of the executive suite dish out. One of the major means by which the plutocracy controlled its employees was economic terrorism: fear of job loss, fear of unemployment, fear of entering old age without income or savings. Before FDR, these fears were universal throughout the American workforce. But a big part of the New Deal was unemployment compensation. Another part was Social Security. Neither of these programs existed before FDR achieved their enactment by Congress. Each of these programs radically curtailed employers' abilities to terrorize their workers. FDR's creation of a federal welfare system did likewise, even as his passage of the National Labor Relations Act guaranteed workers the right to organize. In retaliation, the Plutocracy never forgave FDR. Thus for the past 70 years the plutocrats have schemed and fought to undo every one of these programs – to totally wreck them all if not repeal them.

(2)-Though most folks understand at least subconsciously that FDR saved American from Communism, what is less commonly recognized is that he saved America from fascism too. Many of the plutocrats supported Hitler and favored Nazism and fascism in general as a way of "disciplining" the work force, minimizing labor costs and maximizing production. Among the more ignorant workers, especially in the KuKlux kounties of the South, the Middle West and the Far West, fascism (which blamed the Jews for the Crash and Depression) was the most popular ideology of the day. Had FDR not been elected, it's highly probable there would have been a fascist coup, with the fascist storm troopers driven by the same economic desperation that had swollen the ranks of the Communist Party. Despite the fact such a coup would have undoubtedly triggered a second Civil War (with the Communists battling the fascists here just as they would soon be forced to do in Spain), a huge part of Big Business was betting on the fascists. A nationwide conspiracy for a fascist takeover was in fact aborted only after a Marine general exposed the plot (Google "The Plot to Seize the White House"). Following the collapse of the coup, the New Deal's early successes – particularly jobs programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and the Works Projects Administration (WPA) – relieved much of the desperation that had driven so many Americans to the far Left and the far Right. But the Plutocracy, which had dreamed of making America another Nazi Germany, never forgave FDR.

Despite the passage of 70 years, the plutocrats' thirst for revenge has never diminished. Which is precisely why they have created a skyrocketing federal deficit – to provide a rationale for destroying the social safety net – and also why they support unrestricted immigration, not to mention paying immigrants less than minimum wage (a ploy Bush has already endorsed), both of which exert irresistible downward pressure on wages. And don't overlook Fundamentalist Christianity: since Protestant Fundamentalism formerly legitimized the heartless oppression of coal miners, textile-mill workers and share croppers, not to mention murderous discrimination against blacks, there's no doubt it could do all these things again. Then there's the Patriot Act – which could just as easily be used against economic protestors as against Islamic terrorists.

Bottom line, the plutocrats want to destroy the social safety net in order restore workplace "discipline" – i.e., totally intimidated, utterly submissive, miserably underpaid workers – just like during those wonderful Herbert Hoover years.

Bush's "ownership society" promises to be an "ownership society" indeed: one in which the owners – the plutocrats – again have all the power, just as they did in the Hoover era, while the rest of us are again reduced to the stature of serfs and the equivalent of slavery.

Alas...

WE'VE LOST CONTROL OF THE LANGUAGE

By "we" I mean those of us who regardless of our political labels understood the darker intentions of the Reagan Administration and thus understand the cruel miasma into which Bush League is trying to lead us – where it will almost certainly lead us unless we develop an analysis adequate to name it, describe it, explain it and thereby mobilize a nationwide opposition to it that actually stands a chance of winning.

It probably won't happen. The men and women of the genuine Left, people who possessed both the requisite intellectual prowess and the emotional mandate to undertake such patently dialectical projects, have mostly gone off to the Great Central Committee in the Sky, and the pseudo-Left is still babbling pointlessly that "the personal is political" and shrieking its predictable slogans in support of mass murder whether "free abortion on demand" or "all power to Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and the Palestinian suicide bombers." The moderates are silent – silenced as much by their own unfortunate sense of growing irrelevance as by the media's insistence on reducing political controversy to the stature of road rage – and the rightists of all persuasions are predictably gloating. Worse, Republican control of both houses of Congress virtually guarantees that Bush's word is law.

But at least some people with far greater audiences than I have are thinking in the right direction. One such journalist's work is available here; this is the best single essay on Bush's inaugural address I have read anywhere. Another relevant work, which targets perception and description but neglects to focus closely enough on the all-important role of language itself, is here. A third analysis, exposing the doublethink characteristic of the whole inaugural address, appeared in The Washington Post. It thus may require registration but because of its importance is nevertheless linked here. Which brings me to...

THE REAL REASON AMERICA DESPISES THE LEFT

The last election was not the rightist victory the mainstream media would have us believe. In at least a dozen states, voters enacted leftist measures such as minimum-wage laws or minimum-wage increases even as they voted for Bush. This proves to me that what cost Kerry the election was indeed mostly his peek-a-boo pacifism – his plan for unilateral disarmament of America's nuclear arsenal, his conviction Islam's 14-century war on civilization is merely a "crime problem," the probability Kerry would speedily retreat from the Middle East.

The election results also suggest that – especially after the Republicans get through wrecking the remnants of the New Deal – candidates with a strong commitment to salvaging and restoring Social Security and the rest of the social safety net will win the most votes. Particularly if the economy continues to dribble down the proverbial drain.

Since the Republicans are what they have been since the days of Abraham Lincoln – the party of Big Business – the winning candidates will either run as independents, as members of some new third party as yet unborn, or as Democrats.

But if the Democrats are to have any success at all, they must first totally and ruthlessly purge the Democratic Party of the pseudo-pacifist thugs who (again) are literally spitting in the faces of American soldiers – and thus in the face of America itself. This particular kind of drooling frenzy was not reportedly part of the vandalism and squalling viciousness that occurred during an anti-military tantrum at Seattle Central Community College at about the same time Bush was giving his Orwellian speech, but the symbolic spittle was nevertheless obvious. The Associated Press photograph that is linked here (scroll down to Jan. 20, "The Left Is So Classy") should be posted in every Democratic headquarters in America as a reminder of the real reason Kerry lost: IT'S THE RABBLE, STUPID.

Lest we forget, a similar sort of venomous pseudo-leftist obscenity – flinging human feces at soldiers returning from Vietnam – is a big part of the reason Richard Milhous Nixon won re-election in 1972 by the largest landslide in American history.

In 2004, when most Americans thought of Kerry, they probably pictured a band of screaming lynch-trash just like the mob at Seattle Central Community College. No wonder they voted for Bush. So did I.

As long as the Democratic Party continues to tolerate cretins of the sort who were displaying their collegiate sensibilities in Seattle Thursday – in fact until the democratic Party publicly denounces them, expels them all and divorces itself from them forever – I will never again be able to consider myself a Democrat.

(Hat Tip: Sound Politics)

And now for a total (and probably totally welcome) change of pace:

WESTERN CIV BEGINS WITH STONEHENGE

For years I have argued, much to the discomfiture of some of my more doctrinaire Christian acquaintances, that Western Civilization begins not with the birth of Jesus nor even with the Cross of Christ but at least three thousand years earlier – that the composite symbol of Western Civilization is indeed therefore not the Cross but rather the Standing Stone, the megalith-aligned-with-the-heavens of the sort our ancient European ancestors began erecting some five thousand years ago.

Which makes our own civilization as ancient as its Chinese counterpart (and every bit as pregnant with genuine metaphysical wisdom, too, if the works of the ancient British and European poets ever finally escape the shrouds of inquisitorial centuries of ecclesiastical censorship).

But my argument that Taliesin's "There is no thing in which I have not been" is exactly equivalent to Lao Tzu's "Tao is ever inactive, but there is no thing it does not do" will have to wait for another time. This is about astronomy, the macrocosm of space, not spirituality and the microcosm of human perception (though you cannot discuss astronomy without at least implying spirit and psyche), something our own ancestors clearly knew: hence Cro Magnon's 35,000-year-old trackings of the Moon, for which see Alexander Marshack's The Roots of Civilization, not to mention the 5000-year-old public-works project we know today as Stonehenge. We of Westernesse were making scientific observations of the sun, moon and stars long before we had written language. Taliesin again, speaking as Druid: "I know the star knowledge of stars before the earth was made...I have been loquacious prior to being gifted with speech." And our passionate penchant for such knowledge, says the inimitable Tunku Varadarajan, is yet another of the reasons Islam so despises us. It is also one of our great strengths, and the foundation of yet greater strengths, points which he elaborates in a vital essay available here. And then a report on the wondrous discoveries themselves is linked here.

This is contemplative reading aplenty. I hope you will find the links as thought provoking as I did. Have a good weekend; I'll be back Monday, God willing.

Posted by Loren at January 21, 2005 08:32 PM