Morality on the Ballot

This upcoming election is sometimes characterized as a battle for America’s soul, but the disposition of our soul is lost in ludicrous partisan bickering and stupid ideological loyalties which are little more than childish stamping of the feet and saying “because I said so”. We consciously avert our eyes from the real cause of our moral and financial poverty –war!

In a prior blog I returned to a familiar theme – 9/11. I recounted the scientific impossibility of the Twin Towers crashing to the ground at free fall speed due to collision of aircraft or fire. The seventy lower floors, undamaged by either, must have, in the fire and collision scenario, offered some resistance to the damaged mass above it, making it impossible for the buildings to collapse at free fall speed as if the remaining undamaged greater mass was molecularly undifferentiated from air. But the Towers did in fact collapse at free fall speed in direct contravention to the Laws of Gravity, Conservation of Energy and other established and accepted scientific principles. The government’s official conclusion and report to the people confirmed that in fact, the laws of physics were in abeyance on Sept. 11. Since this is impossible, the government report, “The 9/11 Commission Report” is obviously untrue.

Then I turn to Iraq. It has been confirmed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Sadaam Hussein was not in league with Al Qaeda , nor did he play a role in the 9/11 attack. Yet those allegations were the raison d’être for our invasion.

So, if there are no Socratic truths, and no scientific truths, in what serve as initiators for war, a case can be made that the wars themselves are ethically and constitutionally illegal and immoral.

Are we going to take America’s soul or ideology into the voting booth?

Cents and Sensibility

In a prior blog I suggested that job creation is a function of market conditions rather than taxation. If there is a market demand for a businessman’s product or service, he will add jobs when needed to meet that demand and capture the available profits. He will not wait untill January 2011 to see if the Bush tax cuts are extended. This is little more than common sense. But isn’t the supposition that extending the (heretofore statistically ineffective?) Bush tax cuts will inspire a marked improvement in the market conditions for job creation a different level of sophistication in understanding and applying macro-economics and the esoterica of taxation theory? I and I suspect most regular folks don’t possess this level of prescient economic sophistication. So how did this belief become so prevalent that many in the Tea Party consider it a truism? How can you explain an inconsistency of reasoning that allows people to know there was a surplus after the eight years of the Clinton Administration and a trebled deficit after eight years of the Bush Administration; that there was lower unemployment under the Clinton tax rates and higher unemployment under the Bush tax rates, and yet still propose to extend the Bush rates rather than revert to the Clinton rates? Again, only a very sophisticated and credible but easily comprehensible economic line of reasoning could overcome the clarity of hindsight and the natural inclination of common sense. Has any such argument been advanced? If not, why are the middle class, the promised beneficiaries of a tax cut, out in the street protesting? Are we to believe that all on their own, without advanced economic erudition, they chose to spontaneously rise up and sublimate their own interests, and organize and mobilize a grass roots political movement to sustain the Bush tax rates because of a compelling fiscal need to assuage the financial interests and feelings of the wealthy? Really? And then ask yourself, what ingenious and multifarious effort was required to induce the middle class to even conjecture that universal health care is adverse to their interests? It is not my intent at this time to pass judgment whether it is or not, but doesn’t it seem likely that on its face such a program focused on the cost of health care would appeal to the middle class? How then did so many, so quickly, become so vociferously convinced that it is not a benefit, but a threat? This, simply, is not an expected middle class attitude. To foster such a counter-intuitive middle class position requires sophisticated knowledge, analysis, and maieutic persuasion not typified by any Tea Party member, leader, or argument with which I am familiar. Still, somehow that view has taken hold.

Often, incorrectly, my opinions are construed as mean-spirited attacks on cherished ideologies. My actual thesis is that in the ordinary course of our pedestrian political lives, ideology is a can of Spam, marketed and promoted using the same techniques used to sell other processed meat. But in the interest of space and to allow for personal reflection, I will open my thesis for further inspection with this simple question, “Are the sudden advent of the Tea Party and the Citizens United decision coincidental”? It takes a lot of money to convince a populace eighty years into the mutualism of Social Security, forty years into the mutualism of Medicare, and five years into the Prescription Drug Benefit, that these programs are bad, and that the whole attitude of mutualism is offensive and so detrimental to the interests of the Middle Class as to require rejection of Universal Health Care. Again, I am willing to be economically enlightened, but at this point I’m not. I personally have not heard anything from the Tea Party other than superficial talking points. And I just can’t help but wonder what has happened to cause this semester of the Middle Class to reject what their predecessors embraced as Middle Class interests. Is it just coincidental that a movement funded by Supreme Court approved billionaires has so radically changed the political landscape? My enquiring mind wants to know!

Coup d'etat

In the past I have argued that we, as a body politic, have become obsessed with ideology and defending our chosen side(s), parroting talking points as cleverly as possible in lieu of the exertions of thought, and actively avoiding the provocations of knowledge. Several weeks ago reasonably observant folks may have noticed there was a release of information by the National Security Archive (George Washington University) pertinent to our Iraq invasion. I had expected some comment on its existence, or mere recognition of its availability. Considering the myriad subjects discussed on blog sites, from TV shows, celebrity sex, sports, electoral politics, to creationism, it is significant in this age of empire and debt that the attention of the supposedly politically attuned somehow by-passed official documentation of aggressive war. I can only surmise heads are buried in sand as ideological defense and psychological avoidance of the verities of American militarism. It is much easier to be a member of the Tea Party than an actual conscientious patriot. It is much easier to let Madison Avenue contracted by billionaires sell what is in comparison a zero calorie politico/economic narrative than to look a trillion dollars of death and destruction in the face. There has been a coup d’état over the original American mind, and it has been perpetrated by the military/industrial complex and the empire-ists.

Those bothering to read this archived information may be tempted to argue it represents typical convolutions and messiness inherent in any policy formation. Standing alone it could be seen that way, but read for what it is, the trail of the implementation of a strategy developed by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his book “The Grand Chessboard”, which underpins a spectacularly more frightening manifesto entitled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, alternately referred to as the PNAC (Project for a New American Century) paper, it exposes the Iraq war progression as edited script more so than improvisation or response to the chaos of the political universe. Orchestrated moves to “fix the facts” in facilitation of the agenda to establish American military dominance of the region, an objective that “transcended” Saddam’s rule, attest to the premeditated and inexorable march to war, independent of subsequent sham justifications. The calculated manipulation of the stimuli of fear and patriotism is on full display in the text of the archival material, and is simply the culmination of a similar exercise selling our Afghan adventure.

If a bowling ball is suspended five feet over a table and is released, scientists can calculate how much time it will take to impact the table top. They can also calculate the difference in the elapsed time if a 12oz. plastic cup is positioned between the ball and table. Yet, on that fateful day the Twin Towers crashed to the ground at free-fall speed, as if the seventy lower floors of each tower, undamaged by collision or fire, were molecularly undifferentiated from air. Afterward, the distinguished 9/11 Commissioners in league with the government/corporate media continued the nullification of the sciences of physics and engineering,and then became active proselytizers of the new, compulsory religion of 9/11. Those habituated to take solace in conventional ideology and the legend of American Exceptionalism will be indifferent to the difficulties of benign reconciliation of “official” scientific improbabilities of the events of 9/11 and their expedient perfect congruence with the optimal geo/military desires of the acolytes of Brzezinski - the authors of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”. While others contemplating the irrationalities of the 9/11 myth and the fact that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, might view the American public as a Pavlovian dog, kenneled in a Skinner Box, being force-fed an imperial hierarchy of needs by the Pharisees of PNAC.

After reading the seventy-six pages of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses”, and considering the debate over the propriety of use of public funds to address the domestic hardships of the neediest Americans, and the simultaneous obscene and immoral expense of the Napoleonic quest for world domination recast in the new American vernacular, I can’t help but wonder which side of the controversy resurrected Founding Fathers would find most adverse to the spirit of their Constitution and vision of America. Which would take priority, "We the People" or "We the Empire"?

Post Script Oct 25, 2010 - On Oct. 24, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, said to Christiane Amanpour on the news program "This Week" that there was a push for war in Iraq by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz and other Pentagon officials, "that almost bordered on insubordination", unsupported by any credible intelligence linking Sadaam to 9/11. Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz are among the authors of "Rebuilding America's Defenses". The Grand Chessboard - Rebuilding America's Defenses - Empire.

Man behind the Curtain

Recently I have begun to use the word “capitalist” in my discussions of political and economic issues. Usually I am trying to highlight the hate/fear response to Marxism juxtaposed with the blind, unquestioned acceptance of capitalism. I have sensed a cultural myopia. Take the health care debate. The upcoming election is framed as a referendum on “big government” and the “socialist” healthcare reform. As Americans have been carefully conditioned to be ideologically one-wayed, appearances may be deceiving. With no public option, what some characterize as “socialist” may actually be advanced, sophisticated capitalism.

Think of the origins of health reform and you’ll recall the initial and loudest voices asking for relief were not the ‘grass roots’, but were in actuality corporations and businesses. The steady refrain was our corporations were at a competitive disadvantage with foreign concerns because of the costs of health coverage to employees. The private for- profit corporations couldn’t afford to pay the premiums of the private for-profit insurance companies, who in turn couldn’t afford the pay-outs to the private for-profit medical and pharmaceutical industries. And the private for- profit medical and pharmaceutical industries said their realities made it impossible to provide products and services their customers could afford to buy as individuals.

Now, without retracing the convoluted trail, we can agree the concerns of politicians and lobbyists were obviously amalgamated to capture the necessary votes. So what is Obamacare? It is a tax with a title. This tax will directly subsidize the costs of premiums of private for-profit insurance companies. Remember, this tax will be in addition to your personal payment or payroll contribution to your insurance costs, Yet, the government will not control the premiums; the companies will say they reflect legitimate business needs. It won’t and can’t regulate or limit their profits because that would be interference with the business incentive. It can’t dictate executive compensation because that is a private concern. And it would be anti-capitalistic to dictate the level of return to shareholders. So, in essence the government will just be the employee of the capitalists, collecting via the tax a portion of their premiums for them, which the insurers will direct to their own bottom lines. Do you really think the capitalists want to repeal Obamacare? As it stands, Obamacare is not socialism; it is capitalist Nirvana.

With respect to the sincerity of those challenging what they feel is a government transgression, the Tea Party, conceived and funded by billionaires, is a sophisticated Madison Avenue campaign to manufacture illusions of “grass roots” libertarianism so the anger of the duped electorate will help compel the government to give up the few concessions it received in the reform package, such as the prohibition against not covering pre-existing conditions and various other afflictions insurance companies had heretofore arbitrarily declined to cover. If this is achieved the government, via the tax, will still pay but have very little say. Capitalists would have even less incentive to repeal Obamacare - right?

I submit, contrary to what we are encouraged to believe or think, this is not Karl Marx pulling the strings. It seems more reminiscent of Nathan Rothschild.