2011_2_24 Cairo moves to Madison.
Dear Stan,
First of all, I can’t tell you how sickened I am by what is happening in the State senate of my home state, Wisconsin. To see what Scott Walker and other Republican governors are trying to do—crush unions, decimate the middle class, make it so their rich friends and backers in the private sector never have to pay taxes, blame the budget crisis in the states on the workers in the public sector, and refuse to do the right thing, that is, tax the wealthy which would go a long way in solving the problem of the deficits—really burns my ass, as my dad used to say. Speaking of my father, he was president of the CIO Union at Hamilton Beach, the factory he worked at in Racine for 35 years. He was president for 12 years and after his tenure in office he resembled Bill Clinton, the elder statesman whose experience was still of value to members of the union. I’m sure he is turning in his grave over what is happening in Madison: a frontal attack on not only collective bargaining, but also a questioning if unions should even exists. They want to flush down the toilet a tradition that has been around for 75 years. The only consolation is the response to this outrageous attack, as tens of thousands of local and sympathetic people have been demonstrating for the past 2 weeks and have no plans to let up until the governor, Scott Walker, agrees to remove that section in his so-called Budget Repair Bill about outlawing collective bargaining. To see the public workers react with such alacrity and passion, and in such huge numbers, warms my heart. As Paul Ryan put it, “Cairo has moved to Wisconsin.”
I posted a piece on my blog earlier today about the situation and how I viewed it; but it did not included the phone conversation that a blogger from Buffalo managed to record when he posed as Dave Koch, a billionaire businessman—an oil man-- who is one of Walker’s backers. It proves what I thought and wrote about in my article: he admits that the budget crisis was just a vehicle to achieve his main goal, which is a long time right wing ambition, stamp out the unions once and for all. The blogger who trick him into the revealing conversation was Ian Murphy. He did some research on Koch and was able to sound like him and talk like him. Walker was so full of himself he was, as Murphy put on THE LAST WORD last night, he was “oblivious” and never questioned the authenticity of the other voice on the line. He was unguarded and spilled the beans willy-nilly. He admitted the hubbub that he created around the State’s budget woes was merely a smoke screen for his real target, the public sector unions. He said “This is our moment” and I want to do “something big.” To eviscerate the unions at this time, before the 2012 election campaign gets rolling, would just about cinch a Republican victory in the fall, and of course he would be a hero of the party, maybe even its presidential candidate. One looks at Walker and it’s clear this man’s middle name is AMBITIOUS. If he were to win this first round in this class warfare, and the other Tea Party governors follow suit, he’d automatically go to the front of the class. However, the game is far from over. Indeed, a poll conducted by USA TODAY and CNN had 61% backing the union views and collective bargaining, and about 31% backing Walker’s stand. In any event, thanks to Ian Murphy the cat is out of the bag and he ain’t going back in it.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
The Battle Joined
2011_2_22 The Battle Joined
Events in Madison, Wisconsin, last week and continuing this week has made it clear that the Republican party is the captive of its ultra-conservative wing who are hell-bent on this mission: “to take the country back.” That has been the mantra of the Tea Party folks since their inception. Sarah Palin uses the phrase often as well. They want to take it back to the time when WASPs were on the top of the social heap, when business had a freer hand, when regulations were minimal for business, when minorities knew their place, and when government was small and ineffective. The Far Right would also love to roll back the union movement to the dark ages, especially the public-sector unions, who, it should be known, contributed $200 million to Obama camping in 2008. If they could eliminate the opportunity to put that much into the 2012 election that would be a big plus for Republican chances to sweep in 2012, with a THANK-YOU nod toward the Supreme Court for their ruling that Corporations were comparable to persons and therefore could spend as much as they like on their candidates.
Now the newly elected Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, 43, steps forward with his “Budget Repair Bill,” a foolproof plan to take the public-sector unions down under the guise of spreading the pain among all middle class taxpayers in regard their pension and benefit plans. I call it foolproof because he knows he has the numbers to win easily in the State Senate. So he launched his plan and when he did 14 Democratic senators walked out in order to stall the vote, which they would have lost. At the same time 5000 union people and sympathizers began to demonstrate in and around the Capitol building. By last Saturday 70,000 were joining the protest movement and Walker said he couldn’t care less: he was doing the right thing and therefore he wasn’t going to negotiate with anybody; it was a done deal and the senators should return to their jobs, as should all the teachers. In his view Unions need to be knocked off their high horse; they needed to be brought down to earth to be as poor as the majority of taxpayers and members of private-sector unions. They must be punished for being such good negotiators. He cleverly exploited the resentment among other taxpayers whose benefit expenses have increased over time. Walker is only leveling the field (in a downward fashion) while the rich get richer (in an upward fashion) as their taxes keep getting cut (all for the sake of the economy, of course.)
What’s really galling is when the Union agrees to accept an increase in costs he won’t sit down and talk to union leaders about the worse aspect of his so-called Repair Bill: he has outlawed collective bargaining for benefits, vacations and work conditions. So there are the bare knuckles, the full outrage of this bill, what can not stand in the eyes of union members of whatever stripe because it is business trying to, finally, having a good chance to eliminate a major countervailing power, something business has dreamed about since the inception of the union movement. Walker is trying to get across the idea that unions aren’t necessary, they are the bane of business and progress, and they should be outlawed. This attack is the reason this is such a BIG DEAL and why the demonstrators have to not give up, for the very existence of the idea of unions seems to be at risk. Collective Bargaining means having a seat at the table; it is the cornerstone of Unionism; it is what it’s all about. No individual can fight for justice and rights like an organized group can. Walker is now talking out of both sides of his mouth. He keeps say the senators should come back and let’s talk about what’s not negotiable. Dear Sir, that makes no sense whatsoever. So the standoff continues.
Going on at the same time in the House was more evidence of right wing attack dogs.
The Republicans, now lean and mean, purged of all moderates and newly aggressive after their triumph at the polls last November, have begun a blitzkrieg on the federal front while Walker and others of his ilk begin on the State level. And it has already proved viral, having spread to Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. The ultra-conservatives leading the charge have read their taking control of the House as a mandate to go after spending—programs they don’t like, for ideological reasons—with a meat ax. They slashed $61 billion from the budget. Cuts included domestic program and foreign aid (always a favorite to get rid of), school programs, nutrition programs, environmental protection, and heating and housing subsides for the poor. They defunded Planned Parenthood, sections of the Health Care Bill, and the Public Media,
NPR and PBS. (These most likely won’t make it through the senate.)
The Far Right would love to bury the union movement, which they have hated for many decades; they feel the moment is right to attack with 16-inch guns. No doubt Governor Walker is making a big play, desiring to get out front early, establishing himself as fresh and capable candidate for president next year. It’s quite a gamble and the endgame is yet in sight. If he does indeed start the ball rolling on a systematic dismantling of union power, it certainly would be a leg up for the Republican who could manage that.
Happily I can report that there are mass demonstrations in those other states trying to do what Walker has started. The battle is joined and far from over.
Events in Madison, Wisconsin, last week and continuing this week has made it clear that the Republican party is the captive of its ultra-conservative wing who are hell-bent on this mission: “to take the country back.” That has been the mantra of the Tea Party folks since their inception. Sarah Palin uses the phrase often as well. They want to take it back to the time when WASPs were on the top of the social heap, when business had a freer hand, when regulations were minimal for business, when minorities knew their place, and when government was small and ineffective. The Far Right would also love to roll back the union movement to the dark ages, especially the public-sector unions, who, it should be known, contributed $200 million to Obama camping in 2008. If they could eliminate the opportunity to put that much into the 2012 election that would be a big plus for Republican chances to sweep in 2012, with a THANK-YOU nod toward the Supreme Court for their ruling that Corporations were comparable to persons and therefore could spend as much as they like on their candidates.
Now the newly elected Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, 43, steps forward with his “Budget Repair Bill,” a foolproof plan to take the public-sector unions down under the guise of spreading the pain among all middle class taxpayers in regard their pension and benefit plans. I call it foolproof because he knows he has the numbers to win easily in the State Senate. So he launched his plan and when he did 14 Democratic senators walked out in order to stall the vote, which they would have lost. At the same time 5000 union people and sympathizers began to demonstrate in and around the Capitol building. By last Saturday 70,000 were joining the protest movement and Walker said he couldn’t care less: he was doing the right thing and therefore he wasn’t going to negotiate with anybody; it was a done deal and the senators should return to their jobs, as should all the teachers. In his view Unions need to be knocked off their high horse; they needed to be brought down to earth to be as poor as the majority of taxpayers and members of private-sector unions. They must be punished for being such good negotiators. He cleverly exploited the resentment among other taxpayers whose benefit expenses have increased over time. Walker is only leveling the field (in a downward fashion) while the rich get richer (in an upward fashion) as their taxes keep getting cut (all for the sake of the economy, of course.)
What’s really galling is when the Union agrees to accept an increase in costs he won’t sit down and talk to union leaders about the worse aspect of his so-called Repair Bill: he has outlawed collective bargaining for benefits, vacations and work conditions. So there are the bare knuckles, the full outrage of this bill, what can not stand in the eyes of union members of whatever stripe because it is business trying to, finally, having a good chance to eliminate a major countervailing power, something business has dreamed about since the inception of the union movement. Walker is trying to get across the idea that unions aren’t necessary, they are the bane of business and progress, and they should be outlawed. This attack is the reason this is such a BIG DEAL and why the demonstrators have to not give up, for the very existence of the idea of unions seems to be at risk. Collective Bargaining means having a seat at the table; it is the cornerstone of Unionism; it is what it’s all about. No individual can fight for justice and rights like an organized group can. Walker is now talking out of both sides of his mouth. He keeps say the senators should come back and let’s talk about what’s not negotiable. Dear Sir, that makes no sense whatsoever. So the standoff continues.
Going on at the same time in the House was more evidence of right wing attack dogs.
The Republicans, now lean and mean, purged of all moderates and newly aggressive after their triumph at the polls last November, have begun a blitzkrieg on the federal front while Walker and others of his ilk begin on the State level. And it has already proved viral, having spread to Ohio, Indiana and Iowa. The ultra-conservatives leading the charge have read their taking control of the House as a mandate to go after spending—programs they don’t like, for ideological reasons—with a meat ax. They slashed $61 billion from the budget. Cuts included domestic program and foreign aid (always a favorite to get rid of), school programs, nutrition programs, environmental protection, and heating and housing subsides for the poor. They defunded Planned Parenthood, sections of the Health Care Bill, and the Public Media,
NPR and PBS. (These most likely won’t make it through the senate.)
The Far Right would love to bury the union movement, which they have hated for many decades; they feel the moment is right to attack with 16-inch guns. No doubt Governor Walker is making a big play, desiring to get out front early, establishing himself as fresh and capable candidate for president next year. It’s quite a gamble and the endgame is yet in sight. If he does indeed start the ball rolling on a systematic dismantling of union power, it certainly would be a leg up for the Republican who could manage that.
Happily I can report that there are mass demonstrations in those other states trying to do what Walker has started. The battle is joined and far from over.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Potboiler Fantasy
2011_2_09 Potboiler Fantasy
Finished another drawing last night, an atypical work. How do I describe it? Well, it is three fantastic figures in huge pot, another figure outside the pot, with a fiery mandala on the outside of the pot, which indicates whatever is in the pot is ‘cooking.’ In the back of my mind were two things: memories of my catholic youth and stories about certain martyrs who were killed by boiling them in oil; and images from Alchemy, the ‘Bath of the Philosophers,’ especially that image I have seen in several books of Christ in a ‘bath’ with an alchemist stoking the fire with a bellows. Two of the figures look like creatures in that bar scene in “Star Wars,” and the third figure is off to the side and of a somewhat different character, less grotesque but still fantastical. One of the Aliens has the head of a crock, a long neck like a giraffe and two tits on its neck, and a crown on her head. The other has a snake-like neck and a head that combines a snake with a bulbous effect. Very strange indeed! Its right arm is visible on the right side of the format, with its right hand shaped like a gun. Why? I don’t know. Maybe he is Jared Loughner’s true self. The third figure is a variation of an image I have used twice before. He has a long stiff beard, a bird’s beak, a checkerboard jacket, a black circle oh his right deltoid, and head compose of concentric circles with stars visible inside two rings. At the center of the circles is a white and empty smaller circle. He’s a mystic traveller of some sort; he stares off to the right, perhaps gazing at depths the two aliens have no notion of. There are stars inside two of the concentric circles, some are white, and some are black. The stars are repeated on the outside of the pot, inside the mandala. There is one other creature alongside the pot, a cow-like critter that seemed to be braying for all he’s worth.
Surprise, surprise! The house defeated a Republican bill to extend the Patriot Act when 24 Republicans joined Democrats to vote it down 277-148 (in a process that required 2/3 vote.) Eight Tea Party types joined the no vote.
There is a crisis reaching critical mass in our judicial system as Republicans continue to block Obama’s choices for the circuit court with delaying tactics, once more playing politics rather than doing the right thing. But the White House has been slow to nominate too and the confirmation process in the senate is dysfunctional as well. In short, they are not keeping up with the need for enough judges, not replacing those who are retiring. When Obama took office there were 54 vacancies. Now there are 101 with 46 of them considered in an emergency status.
The federal stimulus package provided $58.5 billion for food stamps. The program helped 43.6 million people in November 2010. Half of them were children. Before the recession the program was serving 26 million people. The money spent also helps the economy.
President Karzai wants all reconstruction and development units that support NATO troops should be phased out, as the Afghanis do not want them changing their country by outside whim and attitude of knowing what’s best for a people they don’t really understand.
I haven’t watched any TV news yet today but yesterday Omar Suleiman made some remarks that came across as threats to folks in the square downtown--that the government would not tolerate them staying there very much longer and may have to call out the police. The crowd yesterday was the biggest yet. It would be suicidal for the police and the leaders of the old guard to fire on that many of their citizens. Could they be that stupid? They have had their way for so long they can’t stand the idea of the rabble pushing them around.
(Saturday: The revolution succeeds)
On the 18th day of the uprising that became a revolution, Feb. 11, Mubarak finally realized his day was over and he resigned the presidency and the Military assumed the temporary custodial care of the government until the election next September.
Yesterday and events of last night will take an honored place in my memory, as vividly as the assassinations and other events of the sixties and seventies. First it was Tunisia that chased out its autocrat, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in office for 30 years, who fled to Saudi Arabia. Tunisia is a relatively small Arab state with 12 million citizens, while Egypt has a population of 85 million and is regarded as the, so to speak, the flagship Arab state, the historical and cultural center of the Arab Universe. Nonetheless, Egypt’s “little brother,” Tunisia showed it what was possible and “big brother” picked up the baton and began its revolt. And as I write this thousands are demonstrating in Algiers, with riot troops out and helicopters in the air above the crowd. All freedom-loving people are hoping that Egypt ‘s success will spread the contagion through North Africa into the states of the Levant. If the revolution remains largely secular and pluralistic, Israel will probably be safe, or at least as safe as it is now.
For 30 years the 18 million citizens of Cairo were under the thumb of the hated “emergency law” which sanctioned a secret police who could throw people in jail indefinitely without a trial. This revolution was definitely a youth revolt, as all the pictures of the Arab Street indicate, as the children of those who had suffered the most under Mubarak road their parents anger and frustration to a triumph of the will of the younger generation. It was thrilling to watch it all unfold, in one of television’s greatest moments.
On Friday night the rumor was that Mubarak was going to step down, give up the presidency, and the crowd in the square were pent up with excitement. They felt that way because a military spokesman said that would happen. But instead he simply delegated powers to his chief crony, Omar Suleiman, and would hold on to his title as president as new committees work on reforms prior to the elections in September. He referred to himself as the father of his country and struck a tone of Father-Knows-Best and he wanted the children to behave and quit this nonsense in the streets. He revealed he just doesn’t get it, remaining paternalistic and patronizing to the bitter end. The anger, frustration and disappointment in the massive crowd were palpable, but somehow it was contained; it never translated itself into an anarchist fury of destructiveness. They maintained their stance of non-violence, which I thought was close to miraculous. Plans were made to walk over to the presidential palace in the morning.
Now, what happened between the end of that Friday night speech and Saturday morning about 9:30 Tucson time, when Suleiman made his brief announcement on State TV that the president had stepped down and was on his way to his vacation home at Sharm El-Sheik by the Red Sea. Apparently, the military stepped in and forced him to give it all up once and for all, twisting his arm to get out of town. Whatever they actually said, he complied, seeing no other options at that point. Hearing the news the crowd erupted in cheers and shouts that went on and on through the night, as unbridled joy and celebration burst out of tens of thousands of delirious Egyptians.
Many question remain and a rocky road is no doubt ahead for the movement that brought about the change, but the first big step has been accomplished. Three cheers for the youth of Egypt!!
Finished another drawing last night, an atypical work. How do I describe it? Well, it is three fantastic figures in huge pot, another figure outside the pot, with a fiery mandala on the outside of the pot, which indicates whatever is in the pot is ‘cooking.’ In the back of my mind were two things: memories of my catholic youth and stories about certain martyrs who were killed by boiling them in oil; and images from Alchemy, the ‘Bath of the Philosophers,’ especially that image I have seen in several books of Christ in a ‘bath’ with an alchemist stoking the fire with a bellows. Two of the figures look like creatures in that bar scene in “Star Wars,” and the third figure is off to the side and of a somewhat different character, less grotesque but still fantastical. One of the Aliens has the head of a crock, a long neck like a giraffe and two tits on its neck, and a crown on her head. The other has a snake-like neck and a head that combines a snake with a bulbous effect. Very strange indeed! Its right arm is visible on the right side of the format, with its right hand shaped like a gun. Why? I don’t know. Maybe he is Jared Loughner’s true self. The third figure is a variation of an image I have used twice before. He has a long stiff beard, a bird’s beak, a checkerboard jacket, a black circle oh his right deltoid, and head compose of concentric circles with stars visible inside two rings. At the center of the circles is a white and empty smaller circle. He’s a mystic traveller of some sort; he stares off to the right, perhaps gazing at depths the two aliens have no notion of. There are stars inside two of the concentric circles, some are white, and some are black. The stars are repeated on the outside of the pot, inside the mandala. There is one other creature alongside the pot, a cow-like critter that seemed to be braying for all he’s worth.
Surprise, surprise! The house defeated a Republican bill to extend the Patriot Act when 24 Republicans joined Democrats to vote it down 277-148 (in a process that required 2/3 vote.) Eight Tea Party types joined the no vote.
There is a crisis reaching critical mass in our judicial system as Republicans continue to block Obama’s choices for the circuit court with delaying tactics, once more playing politics rather than doing the right thing. But the White House has been slow to nominate too and the confirmation process in the senate is dysfunctional as well. In short, they are not keeping up with the need for enough judges, not replacing those who are retiring. When Obama took office there were 54 vacancies. Now there are 101 with 46 of them considered in an emergency status.
The federal stimulus package provided $58.5 billion for food stamps. The program helped 43.6 million people in November 2010. Half of them were children. Before the recession the program was serving 26 million people. The money spent also helps the economy.
President Karzai wants all reconstruction and development units that support NATO troops should be phased out, as the Afghanis do not want them changing their country by outside whim and attitude of knowing what’s best for a people they don’t really understand.
I haven’t watched any TV news yet today but yesterday Omar Suleiman made some remarks that came across as threats to folks in the square downtown--that the government would not tolerate them staying there very much longer and may have to call out the police. The crowd yesterday was the biggest yet. It would be suicidal for the police and the leaders of the old guard to fire on that many of their citizens. Could they be that stupid? They have had their way for so long they can’t stand the idea of the rabble pushing them around.
(Saturday: The revolution succeeds)
On the 18th day of the uprising that became a revolution, Feb. 11, Mubarak finally realized his day was over and he resigned the presidency and the Military assumed the temporary custodial care of the government until the election next September.
Yesterday and events of last night will take an honored place in my memory, as vividly as the assassinations and other events of the sixties and seventies. First it was Tunisia that chased out its autocrat, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who had been in office for 30 years, who fled to Saudi Arabia. Tunisia is a relatively small Arab state with 12 million citizens, while Egypt has a population of 85 million and is regarded as the, so to speak, the flagship Arab state, the historical and cultural center of the Arab Universe. Nonetheless, Egypt’s “little brother,” Tunisia showed it what was possible and “big brother” picked up the baton and began its revolt. And as I write this thousands are demonstrating in Algiers, with riot troops out and helicopters in the air above the crowd. All freedom-loving people are hoping that Egypt ‘s success will spread the contagion through North Africa into the states of the Levant. If the revolution remains largely secular and pluralistic, Israel will probably be safe, or at least as safe as it is now.
For 30 years the 18 million citizens of Cairo were under the thumb of the hated “emergency law” which sanctioned a secret police who could throw people in jail indefinitely without a trial. This revolution was definitely a youth revolt, as all the pictures of the Arab Street indicate, as the children of those who had suffered the most under Mubarak road their parents anger and frustration to a triumph of the will of the younger generation. It was thrilling to watch it all unfold, in one of television’s greatest moments.
On Friday night the rumor was that Mubarak was going to step down, give up the presidency, and the crowd in the square were pent up with excitement. They felt that way because a military spokesman said that would happen. But instead he simply delegated powers to his chief crony, Omar Suleiman, and would hold on to his title as president as new committees work on reforms prior to the elections in September. He referred to himself as the father of his country and struck a tone of Father-Knows-Best and he wanted the children to behave and quit this nonsense in the streets. He revealed he just doesn’t get it, remaining paternalistic and patronizing to the bitter end. The anger, frustration and disappointment in the massive crowd were palpable, but somehow it was contained; it never translated itself into an anarchist fury of destructiveness. They maintained their stance of non-violence, which I thought was close to miraculous. Plans were made to walk over to the presidential palace in the morning.
Now, what happened between the end of that Friday night speech and Saturday morning about 9:30 Tucson time, when Suleiman made his brief announcement on State TV that the president had stepped down and was on his way to his vacation home at Sharm El-Sheik by the Red Sea. Apparently, the military stepped in and forced him to give it all up once and for all, twisting his arm to get out of town. Whatever they actually said, he complied, seeing no other options at that point. Hearing the news the crowd erupted in cheers and shouts that went on and on through the night, as unbridled joy and celebration burst out of tens of thousands of delirious Egyptians.
Many question remain and a rocky road is no doubt ahead for the movement that brought about the change, but the first big step has been accomplished. Three cheers for the youth of Egypt!!
Friday, February 4, 2011
Riders of the Chariot
2011_2_03 RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT
Patrick White’s novel RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT is a narrative about the creative tasks of four connected characters whose lives magically interact in Sydney, Australia, in the post-war years of the forties and fifties. They are more examples of the breed that White thought of as the burnt ones, touch-by--God-individuals engaged in what Carl Jung would term “Opus Redemption.” The four compose the RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT with the Chariot in this case being a reference to Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism, with one of the four, Mordecai Himmelfarb, being a zaddik, the Hasidic ideal of the just and honest man. The ‘work of the chariot’ involves sacrifice, abuse, misunderstandings, humility, visions, highs and lows—even a crucifixion. It all boils down to being a loner, a crank, an outsider, and a social pariah. As for the halo, few can see it, including some who wear it.
The Four Riders are part of a spiritual vision, which I’d characterize as a common thread of mystical intuition about UNIO MYSTICA, our underlying reality. All four Riders suffer terribly and lead lives of utmost isolation; they are people that God has separated from the common run of humanity, the vast population of “normal people,” each for their own service and purpose. All four live out the roles of scapegoat, pariah, or illuminated outsiders who carry the moral and metaphysical burdens of their fellow creatures. They act out their lives in their respective roles in the context of modern life, within their various spiritual legacies.
Mordecai Himmelfarb is one of the four Riders in White’s novel and he is of particular interest to me because he is the fictional representation closet to my own experience, and that’s one reason the book has special meaning for me. Himmelfarb was a professor and author in Europe prior to World War II. After the war he moved to Australia (Sydney) and took a job in a factory that made bicycles, a menial job at odds with his past and true capacities. Few people could understand his post-war choices. But it does not seem so strange to me. So what was involved with his decision to move to Australia and take such a job? After his earlier social and academic success something happened which emptied that life of the virtue it once had. Rhea, his beloved wife, was seized by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp and he never saw her again. He felt a profound guilt over her disappearance and death, and the only thing that made sense to him was commitment to a life of humility and obscurity. To deny what he had been became a spiritual goal for Himmelfarb. Such a life was more important than “a place in the pews.” Worldly achievements were the playthings of egocentric humanity. He had another goal: to transcend his ego.
My life since I left university teaching has followed a similar path. My post-war choices (the Vietnam War, of course) have been seen by many of my older, academic friends as pretty strange and puzzling, for like Himmelfarb I found a job as a custodian in a neighborhood Presbyterian Church. When I resigned my position at UNLV in 1971, I was fully aware I was committing professional suicide. But I didn’t care. I had moved beyond that concern. I was that fed up with Higher Education in America. My moral imperative and personal vision were at odds with theirs. I had been a political activist on campus for 5 years and it earned me a reputation as a troublemaker, which would cost me tenure. But no matter, I wanted to and needed to make a gesture of defiance when I left to show my former colleagues that there were things more important than job security. So I quit before they could can me. For me it was all part of THE GREAT REFUSAL, the inclination to reject war, materialism, egotism, careerism, social status, environmental abuse, and mainstream values. I walked away from a position I was good at, as Himmelfarb did in Europe to pursue an alterative path. As one academic friend of mine put it, “You climbed a mountain and when you reached the top, you took a leap in the dark, ignoring what you had won. You abandon a post others would kill for. You treated it as garbage in, garbage out.” As I read that today I think of what Ed Abbey once said: “I live at Fort Fuck-it-all.”
Like Himmelfarb, humility became a main concern for me on my new job. Being a janitor was a parallel position to what the ex-professor from Europe had done, and believe me, the transition from Assistant Professor and Big Man on Campus to being a janitor, the lowest of the low, a real scum-job, wasn’t easy; it took a long while, as I had to wrestle with my ego time and time again. Working for Presbyterians made it even more difficult, as they were uppity and aristocratic, believing they had more clout than their numbers would indicate. I went from the limelight to complete invisibility. It was a true test of principle—as radical a turn-around as one could imagine. However, I did have one thing going for me from the get-go: my working class roots. I had worked in five factories in Racine, Wisconsin, my hometown, before I was twenty-one. My father and mother had been life-long factory workers, and so were many of my relatives. In some ways it was like being back in a familiar saddle.
Nonetheless I would characterize those years at the church as my time in purgatory. Other time I saw my service as on the chain gang, or my time as a desert ascetic. But in measuring its impact on me, it was one giant leap foreword in regard my pursuit of self-knowledge, the ultimate attainment. That was the over-all goal, along with putting that knowledge to creative use in my drawing and writings.
Patrick White’s novel RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT is a narrative about the creative tasks of four connected characters whose lives magically interact in Sydney, Australia, in the post-war years of the forties and fifties. They are more examples of the breed that White thought of as the burnt ones, touch-by--God-individuals engaged in what Carl Jung would term “Opus Redemption.” The four compose the RIDERS OF THE CHARIOT with the Chariot in this case being a reference to Merkabah Mysticism and Jewish Gnosticism, with one of the four, Mordecai Himmelfarb, being a zaddik, the Hasidic ideal of the just and honest man. The ‘work of the chariot’ involves sacrifice, abuse, misunderstandings, humility, visions, highs and lows—even a crucifixion. It all boils down to being a loner, a crank, an outsider, and a social pariah. As for the halo, few can see it, including some who wear it.
The Four Riders are part of a spiritual vision, which I’d characterize as a common thread of mystical intuition about UNIO MYSTICA, our underlying reality. All four Riders suffer terribly and lead lives of utmost isolation; they are people that God has separated from the common run of humanity, the vast population of “normal people,” each for their own service and purpose. All four live out the roles of scapegoat, pariah, or illuminated outsiders who carry the moral and metaphysical burdens of their fellow creatures. They act out their lives in their respective roles in the context of modern life, within their various spiritual legacies.
Mordecai Himmelfarb is one of the four Riders in White’s novel and he is of particular interest to me because he is the fictional representation closet to my own experience, and that’s one reason the book has special meaning for me. Himmelfarb was a professor and author in Europe prior to World War II. After the war he moved to Australia (Sydney) and took a job in a factory that made bicycles, a menial job at odds with his past and true capacities. Few people could understand his post-war choices. But it does not seem so strange to me. So what was involved with his decision to move to Australia and take such a job? After his earlier social and academic success something happened which emptied that life of the virtue it once had. Rhea, his beloved wife, was seized by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp and he never saw her again. He felt a profound guilt over her disappearance and death, and the only thing that made sense to him was commitment to a life of humility and obscurity. To deny what he had been became a spiritual goal for Himmelfarb. Such a life was more important than “a place in the pews.” Worldly achievements were the playthings of egocentric humanity. He had another goal: to transcend his ego.
My life since I left university teaching has followed a similar path. My post-war choices (the Vietnam War, of course) have been seen by many of my older, academic friends as pretty strange and puzzling, for like Himmelfarb I found a job as a custodian in a neighborhood Presbyterian Church. When I resigned my position at UNLV in 1971, I was fully aware I was committing professional suicide. But I didn’t care. I had moved beyond that concern. I was that fed up with Higher Education in America. My moral imperative and personal vision were at odds with theirs. I had been a political activist on campus for 5 years and it earned me a reputation as a troublemaker, which would cost me tenure. But no matter, I wanted to and needed to make a gesture of defiance when I left to show my former colleagues that there were things more important than job security. So I quit before they could can me. For me it was all part of THE GREAT REFUSAL, the inclination to reject war, materialism, egotism, careerism, social status, environmental abuse, and mainstream values. I walked away from a position I was good at, as Himmelfarb did in Europe to pursue an alterative path. As one academic friend of mine put it, “You climbed a mountain and when you reached the top, you took a leap in the dark, ignoring what you had won. You abandon a post others would kill for. You treated it as garbage in, garbage out.” As I read that today I think of what Ed Abbey once said: “I live at Fort Fuck-it-all.”
Like Himmelfarb, humility became a main concern for me on my new job. Being a janitor was a parallel position to what the ex-professor from Europe had done, and believe me, the transition from Assistant Professor and Big Man on Campus to being a janitor, the lowest of the low, a real scum-job, wasn’t easy; it took a long while, as I had to wrestle with my ego time and time again. Working for Presbyterians made it even more difficult, as they were uppity and aristocratic, believing they had more clout than their numbers would indicate. I went from the limelight to complete invisibility. It was a true test of principle—as radical a turn-around as one could imagine. However, I did have one thing going for me from the get-go: my working class roots. I had worked in five factories in Racine, Wisconsin, my hometown, before I was twenty-one. My father and mother had been life-long factory workers, and so were many of my relatives. In some ways it was like being back in a familiar saddle.
Nonetheless I would characterize those years at the church as my time in purgatory. Other time I saw my service as on the chain gang, or my time as a desert ascetic. But in measuring its impact on me, it was one giant leap foreword in regard my pursuit of self-knowledge, the ultimate attainment. That was the over-all goal, along with putting that knowledge to creative use in my drawing and writings.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Can a Whip be a Souvenir
2011-1_02 Can a Whip be a Souvenir?
The Black Sphere, my signature symbol, is wet ink on paper, but first it was a dry image in the mind, a mind in distress.
Joseph Campbell put it this way: “ The Mythogenetic zone today is the individual in contact with his own interior life, communicating through his art with those ‘out there.’”
In PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN James Joyce said along the same line: “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
In regard ‘Serpent Power’:
• Moses: “ Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: And it shall come to pass that everyone…when he looketh upon it, shall live.”
• Here is a report of a dream by a first generation Jungian, C. A. Meier: “It was an exhibition with my two sons. Suddenly one of them, who had stayed a little ways back, called out, ‘A snake!’ He had vomited up a worm about 18 inches long (like a snake) and pulled it out of his mouth, and was holding it
in the middle with his right fist, he ran to show me the snake. It had the head of a miniature dog. I said to him I too had once had a worm like that, and it was a good thing when it came out.”
While I was in distress I had a vivid and power dream about a serpent emerging from my body. While I was teaching at UNLV another professor took me into a huge gym to explain his germ theory to me. When we got into a bathroom with urinals he paused and said, “I want you to watch what happens when I spray the red spots on the surface of urinal.” With that he took out an aerosol spray can and dosed the porcelain with a fine triangular mist. The area began to bubble up and create a thick froth; out of the foamy substance a cluster of small silver worms emerged. I stood there amazed. “That’s nothing watch this. I am going to spray those self-same red dots on your left deltoid muscle.” The area, in a similar fashion, turned into froth and then a huge serpent began to emerge from my shoulder. I was so horrified I turned away so I didn’t have to watch this thing happening to me. “You can look now,” my associate said. When I turned I saw he had rolled the snake up like it was a whip with three large loops. He walked toward me saying, “Here, it’s your ‘souvenir.’ ”
Like the dreamer said, it was a good thing that it came out.
The Black Sphere, my signature symbol, is wet ink on paper, but first it was a dry image in the mind, a mind in distress.
Joseph Campbell put it this way: “ The Mythogenetic zone today is the individual in contact with his own interior life, communicating through his art with those ‘out there.’”
In PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN James Joyce said along the same line: “Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.”
In regard ‘Serpent Power’:
• Moses: “ Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: And it shall come to pass that everyone…when he looketh upon it, shall live.”
• Here is a report of a dream by a first generation Jungian, C. A. Meier: “It was an exhibition with my two sons. Suddenly one of them, who had stayed a little ways back, called out, ‘A snake!’ He had vomited up a worm about 18 inches long (like a snake) and pulled it out of his mouth, and was holding it
in the middle with his right fist, he ran to show me the snake. It had the head of a miniature dog. I said to him I too had once had a worm like that, and it was a good thing when it came out.”
While I was in distress I had a vivid and power dream about a serpent emerging from my body. While I was teaching at UNLV another professor took me into a huge gym to explain his germ theory to me. When we got into a bathroom with urinals he paused and said, “I want you to watch what happens when I spray the red spots on the surface of urinal.” With that he took out an aerosol spray can and dosed the porcelain with a fine triangular mist. The area began to bubble up and create a thick froth; out of the foamy substance a cluster of small silver worms emerged. I stood there amazed. “That’s nothing watch this. I am going to spray those self-same red dots on your left deltoid muscle.” The area, in a similar fashion, turned into froth and then a huge serpent began to emerge from my shoulder. I was so horrified I turned away so I didn’t have to watch this thing happening to me. “You can look now,” my associate said. When I turned I saw he had rolled the snake up like it was a whip with three large loops. He walked toward me saying, “Here, it’s your ‘souvenir.’ ”
Like the dreamer said, it was a good thing that it came out.
Monday, November 15, 2010
The White Ribbon
2010_11_13 The White Ribbon
In a way “The White Ribbon” is a poor man’s version of Robert Musil’s novel THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES. I mean that in the sense Musil’s novel is an aristocratic dark prelude to the First World War, whereas Director Hennke narrative takes place in a remote village in Northern Germany in 1913 and 1914. However, it is also much darker in spirit and more ominous than Musil’s narrative. There are three commanding male figures in ”The White Ribbon,” a doctor, a pastor and a Baron, a feudal Lord in a location that hardly seems in the 20th century. They are a nasty triangle of men who practiced a brutal form on male dominance over the women and the children of the village. It is also a story of a silent war going on between the children and the high-and-might triumvirate of Baron/Pastor/Doctor, three professionals that have usurps all authority over the peasant farmers. This war was largely subterranean and events are not clearly spelled out; there are a lot of suggestions about what was going on but ambiguity overrules clarity. There is much that is unanswered and never resolved. Many of Hennke’s films are like that.
The movie opens with the doctor mounted on his horse riding back home. When he approaches his garden the horse takes a tumble and the doctor breaks his collarbone in the accident. Only it turns out to be not an accident as someone had stretched a thin wire tied to two trees across the path and the horse had tripped over it. The incident put the doctor in the hospital for several weeks. By the time the police get there to investigate someone has removed the wire. We never find out who the guilty party was, although by the end of the movie we have some strong suspicions. There are eventually two other destructive incidents that take place but which are never resolved. Someone set fire to the Pastor’s barn which was burned to the ground, and the retarded son of the midwife was brutally assaulted and nearly blinded. The Baron’s son was also kidnapped and found tied to tree in the woods. There were a couple of attacks against the evil trio when we do know which one of the younger folks did it. The oldest son of one farmers, angry at his mother’s death which he blames on the Baron’s carelessness, destroys a huge cabbage patch belonging to the Baron and the pastor’s oldest daughter, one of the apparent ringleaders of the secretly rebellious youths, kills her father’s pet bird without attempting to cover her tracks. She killed the bird with a scissor and put it on his desk in the shape of a cross. The Pastor regularly canes his kids for minor infractions of his protocol of Christian behavior. In another instant, he had another son tie his 14 year old son to his bed to prevent him from masturbating and lectures the lad about such sinful behavior which could end up corrupting his nerves. As the abuse accumulates and the story unfolds it is no mystery why the kids push back against the tyranny of “the fathers.”
The only sympathetic male adult in the movie is the local schoolteacher. He’s also the voice of the narrator of the story—in old age as he looks back at his time in the village. He figures out what has likely happened but makes the mistake of talking to the pastor who calls him vile for suggesting any of his children would stoop to the behavior the teacher is suggesting. The Pastor is just covering his ass because if the authorities are called in he too could be swept up in the scandal of terrible abuse of the vulnerable children. He is a Christian hypocrite of the worst sort, a zealot who disciplines his kids like he was a Gestapo Captain. He beats them; he verbally abuses them by tearing them down as inadequate; and never shows them any warmth, love, or affection. He maintains a cool image and a stance of frowning down his nose at them. The mother is pathetically neglected, treated as a maid, not much more than that. It’s a breeding ground for revolution.
If the Pastor lives to exercise power, the Doctor lives for vanity’s sake. He is the nasty rooster who likes perverse sex, like fucking his live-in punching board, the Village midwife, a woman about 40, and the mother of the retarded boy Karli. After having sex with the midwife he tells her she’s ugly, has bad breath, and he wishes she’d “just die.” He also likes to finger his eldest daughter while he masturbates. She’s probably 16. He’s grotesquely arrogant, egotistical, and absent of empathy—an unsavory role model At the end of the movie he, his kids, the midwife and her son, all disappear, but not together and mysteriously—without a word to anybody. The last we see of the midwife she is borrowing a bike from the schoolteacher to go into town to tell authorities she knew who strung that trip-wire. But that was little more than a ruse to leave the village.
The Baron is the Lord of the Manor and the ceremonial spokesman for the village, the sponsor of the harvest festivities and the employer of many of the farmers. He looks and acts like an aristocrat. His wife dares to confront him with the fact she is leaving him and this hateful village “so full of brutality, envy, revenge and resentment.” The actress who played the role showed how nervous and fearful she was in opposing the “Lord of the Manor.” But as the film concludes she is still with her husband. The Baron’s steward had come in while they Baron and his wife were arguing to tell him some big news: the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated in the streets of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. At this point the film rather hurriedly come to an ambiguous end, while the narrator tells us he was drafted, went in the army, survived the war, but never went back to the village, so he never found out if any of those strange events were solved and understood. The final image in the movie is all the villagers gathered in the church to discuss the war. As people sit waiting the picture slowly turns dimmer and dimmer till, finally, the screen goes dark.
The film was shot in black and white, which was good I think. For one thing it was in tune with the drab character of the village and its environs. The black clothes the girls and women wear seem fitting, in-sync with the puritanical gloss of the culture and the stern Patriarchy that was still so pervasive and dominant.
When all is said and done “The White Ribbon” is a terrible indictment of the Germanic version of fatherhood and it helps us understand why “The Great War” happened and why someone like Hitler was able to come to power, as he was or represented the ultimate expression of the omnipotent paterfamilias.
In a way “The White Ribbon” is a poor man’s version of Robert Musil’s novel THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES. I mean that in the sense Musil’s novel is an aristocratic dark prelude to the First World War, whereas Director Hennke narrative takes place in a remote village in Northern Germany in 1913 and 1914. However, it is also much darker in spirit and more ominous than Musil’s narrative. There are three commanding male figures in ”The White Ribbon,” a doctor, a pastor and a Baron, a feudal Lord in a location that hardly seems in the 20th century. They are a nasty triangle of men who practiced a brutal form on male dominance over the women and the children of the village. It is also a story of a silent war going on between the children and the high-and-might triumvirate of Baron/Pastor/Doctor, three professionals that have usurps all authority over the peasant farmers. This war was largely subterranean and events are not clearly spelled out; there are a lot of suggestions about what was going on but ambiguity overrules clarity. There is much that is unanswered and never resolved. Many of Hennke’s films are like that.
The movie opens with the doctor mounted on his horse riding back home. When he approaches his garden the horse takes a tumble and the doctor breaks his collarbone in the accident. Only it turns out to be not an accident as someone had stretched a thin wire tied to two trees across the path and the horse had tripped over it. The incident put the doctor in the hospital for several weeks. By the time the police get there to investigate someone has removed the wire. We never find out who the guilty party was, although by the end of the movie we have some strong suspicions. There are eventually two other destructive incidents that take place but which are never resolved. Someone set fire to the Pastor’s barn which was burned to the ground, and the retarded son of the midwife was brutally assaulted and nearly blinded. The Baron’s son was also kidnapped and found tied to tree in the woods. There were a couple of attacks against the evil trio when we do know which one of the younger folks did it. The oldest son of one farmers, angry at his mother’s death which he blames on the Baron’s carelessness, destroys a huge cabbage patch belonging to the Baron and the pastor’s oldest daughter, one of the apparent ringleaders of the secretly rebellious youths, kills her father’s pet bird without attempting to cover her tracks. She killed the bird with a scissor and put it on his desk in the shape of a cross. The Pastor regularly canes his kids for minor infractions of his protocol of Christian behavior. In another instant, he had another son tie his 14 year old son to his bed to prevent him from masturbating and lectures the lad about such sinful behavior which could end up corrupting his nerves. As the abuse accumulates and the story unfolds it is no mystery why the kids push back against the tyranny of “the fathers.”
The only sympathetic male adult in the movie is the local schoolteacher. He’s also the voice of the narrator of the story—in old age as he looks back at his time in the village. He figures out what has likely happened but makes the mistake of talking to the pastor who calls him vile for suggesting any of his children would stoop to the behavior the teacher is suggesting. The Pastor is just covering his ass because if the authorities are called in he too could be swept up in the scandal of terrible abuse of the vulnerable children. He is a Christian hypocrite of the worst sort, a zealot who disciplines his kids like he was a Gestapo Captain. He beats them; he verbally abuses them by tearing them down as inadequate; and never shows them any warmth, love, or affection. He maintains a cool image and a stance of frowning down his nose at them. The mother is pathetically neglected, treated as a maid, not much more than that. It’s a breeding ground for revolution.
If the Pastor lives to exercise power, the Doctor lives for vanity’s sake. He is the nasty rooster who likes perverse sex, like fucking his live-in punching board, the Village midwife, a woman about 40, and the mother of the retarded boy Karli. After having sex with the midwife he tells her she’s ugly, has bad breath, and he wishes she’d “just die.” He also likes to finger his eldest daughter while he masturbates. She’s probably 16. He’s grotesquely arrogant, egotistical, and absent of empathy—an unsavory role model At the end of the movie he, his kids, the midwife and her son, all disappear, but not together and mysteriously—without a word to anybody. The last we see of the midwife she is borrowing a bike from the schoolteacher to go into town to tell authorities she knew who strung that trip-wire. But that was little more than a ruse to leave the village.
The Baron is the Lord of the Manor and the ceremonial spokesman for the village, the sponsor of the harvest festivities and the employer of many of the farmers. He looks and acts like an aristocrat. His wife dares to confront him with the fact she is leaving him and this hateful village “so full of brutality, envy, revenge and resentment.” The actress who played the role showed how nervous and fearful she was in opposing the “Lord of the Manor.” But as the film concludes she is still with her husband. The Baron’s steward had come in while they Baron and his wife were arguing to tell him some big news: the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were assassinated in the streets of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. At this point the film rather hurriedly come to an ambiguous end, while the narrator tells us he was drafted, went in the army, survived the war, but never went back to the village, so he never found out if any of those strange events were solved and understood. The final image in the movie is all the villagers gathered in the church to discuss the war. As people sit waiting the picture slowly turns dimmer and dimmer till, finally, the screen goes dark.
The film was shot in black and white, which was good I think. For one thing it was in tune with the drab character of the village and its environs. The black clothes the girls and women wear seem fitting, in-sync with the puritanical gloss of the culture and the stern Patriarchy that was still so pervasive and dominant.
When all is said and done “The White Ribbon” is a terrible indictment of the Germanic version of fatherhood and it helps us understand why “The Great War” happened and why someone like Hitler was able to come to power, as he was or represented the ultimate expression of the omnipotent paterfamilias.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Shellacking of the President
2010_11-03 The Shellacking of the President
Dear Pete,
Well, there’s one more idealistic, naïve, and silver-tongued president, if not exactly down the drain, with his back up against the wall. To me Obama is looking like a faux liberal, a politician in way over his head, another flash in the pan who was eaten up by an adoring crowd that was seduced by his stirring rhetoric of his campaign for the Oval Office. The first black president was another incentive to put him there, just as removing him from office was an incentive to the founding of the Tea Party movement, which from the beginning revealed a racist element. I have a hard time imagining him pulling out of the nose dive he is currently in, and he won’t be nestling with progressive in the next two years—far from it! Odds on he’ll do what Bill Clinton did, move to a center-right place in the political spectrum in order “to get along,” to be effective even in a minimal way. I would not look for him to get his hackles up—to be confrontational, like FDR was with the power of the wealthy in American politics. Obama, I regret to say, doesn’t seem to have the inner grit for that, as he is too identified with Establishment America. He wants to “get along,” above all else. He wants to be liked, to “do the right thing,” to compromise with the other side who have made it abundantly clear time and time again they see compromise as a one way street. The onus is on the president, not them, especially not after their victory last night. And yet today at his Press Conference Obama said he was sure he could work with Republicans. The man never learns and it pains me to say that.
It is fair to say this was a historic election and by that I mean it was more than the usual swing in midterm elections. The numbers in the House were the highest in 70 years. The average has been 22.6 seats change parties in off-year elections. This time it was between 60 to 65 seats, depending on a few races not resolved yet. And consider this: when they combine with the conservative Democrats in the House, well, they will be a legislative powerhouse. Won’t it be ironic if the Democrats in the Senate have to use the filibuster to, say, block repeal of the new Health Care Bill, which was on the minds of several Republicans today? Could happen. On the other hand, conservative Democratic Senators could cross over and join the Republicans, just like their brethren in the House—in order to once again “to get along” with the majority party, one that, unlike the Democrats under Obama’s leadership, can be aggressive in their use of the advantageous legislative position. That’s the big fear: That the GOP will carry through with their threat of a rollback of Obamacare and other bills and to do it with a vengeance. Europeans, who have had universal health care for decades, must think we are out of our minds, picturing our foolishness as a diapered male sitting on a jackass backward, looking behind not forward. Actually, I think the most likely scenario for the Senate will be two years of gridlock, with both sides shouting at each other for the responsibility of the do-nothing congress. I would picture that as a donkey and an elephant standing immobile on the bridge to nowhere.
Paul Krugman has been harping on the Republican eagerness to stop all government spending, which is in his view the worst possible thing they could do, for three reasons: If consumers are not spending due to fear and caution, if the private sector isn’t spending or hiring, out of caution and anxiety over the slow recovery from the recession, and, finally, if the government won’t fill the void, like the New Deal did in the Thirties, where will necessary cash flow come from? Money needs to circulate for things to happen. How can they block the flow and expect to get out of the hole we are in? Krugman has argued that the stimulus bill should have been at least double what it was. Can’t the Fed do it? Yes, and I hear they did make some kind of move today. During the next few years Krugman predicts hard times, a period of “political chaos and economic weakness.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.
Be of good cheer (even though I know it’s difficult),
Jerry P
Dear Pete,
Well, there’s one more idealistic, naïve, and silver-tongued president, if not exactly down the drain, with his back up against the wall. To me Obama is looking like a faux liberal, a politician in way over his head, another flash in the pan who was eaten up by an adoring crowd that was seduced by his stirring rhetoric of his campaign for the Oval Office. The first black president was another incentive to put him there, just as removing him from office was an incentive to the founding of the Tea Party movement, which from the beginning revealed a racist element. I have a hard time imagining him pulling out of the nose dive he is currently in, and he won’t be nestling with progressive in the next two years—far from it! Odds on he’ll do what Bill Clinton did, move to a center-right place in the political spectrum in order “to get along,” to be effective even in a minimal way. I would not look for him to get his hackles up—to be confrontational, like FDR was with the power of the wealthy in American politics. Obama, I regret to say, doesn’t seem to have the inner grit for that, as he is too identified with Establishment America. He wants to “get along,” above all else. He wants to be liked, to “do the right thing,” to compromise with the other side who have made it abundantly clear time and time again they see compromise as a one way street. The onus is on the president, not them, especially not after their victory last night. And yet today at his Press Conference Obama said he was sure he could work with Republicans. The man never learns and it pains me to say that.
It is fair to say this was a historic election and by that I mean it was more than the usual swing in midterm elections. The numbers in the House were the highest in 70 years. The average has been 22.6 seats change parties in off-year elections. This time it was between 60 to 65 seats, depending on a few races not resolved yet. And consider this: when they combine with the conservative Democrats in the House, well, they will be a legislative powerhouse. Won’t it be ironic if the Democrats in the Senate have to use the filibuster to, say, block repeal of the new Health Care Bill, which was on the minds of several Republicans today? Could happen. On the other hand, conservative Democratic Senators could cross over and join the Republicans, just like their brethren in the House—in order to once again “to get along” with the majority party, one that, unlike the Democrats under Obama’s leadership, can be aggressive in their use of the advantageous legislative position. That’s the big fear: That the GOP will carry through with their threat of a rollback of Obamacare and other bills and to do it with a vengeance. Europeans, who have had universal health care for decades, must think we are out of our minds, picturing our foolishness as a diapered male sitting on a jackass backward, looking behind not forward. Actually, I think the most likely scenario for the Senate will be two years of gridlock, with both sides shouting at each other for the responsibility of the do-nothing congress. I would picture that as a donkey and an elephant standing immobile on the bridge to nowhere.
Paul Krugman has been harping on the Republican eagerness to stop all government spending, which is in his view the worst possible thing they could do, for three reasons: If consumers are not spending due to fear and caution, if the private sector isn’t spending or hiring, out of caution and anxiety over the slow recovery from the recession, and, finally, if the government won’t fill the void, like the New Deal did in the Thirties, where will necessary cash flow come from? Money needs to circulate for things to happen. How can they block the flow and expect to get out of the hole we are in? Krugman has argued that the stimulus bill should have been at least double what it was. Can’t the Fed do it? Yes, and I hear they did make some kind of move today. During the next few years Krugman predicts hard times, a period of “political chaos and economic weakness.” It is hard to come to any other conclusion.
Be of good cheer (even though I know it’s difficult),
Jerry P
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