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The Nation / By Liliana Segura

America's "Throwaway People": What Kind of Country Imprisons an Abused 14-Year-Old Girl for Life?

Trina Garnett accidentally set a fatal fire when she was 14. That was in 1976. Could a Supreme Court ruling on juvenile life without parole finally bring her home?

May 10, 2012  |  

 

(Image: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: IXQUICK, Simon Strandgaard, bulletproofbra)

 

 

The following article first appeared in The Nation. For more great content from the Nation, sign up for its e-mail newsletters here. 

On August 29, 1976, around 1:40 am, a fire erupted at 1138 Spruce Street in Chester, Pennsylvania. The building, in a row of two-family homes just south of the Delaware Expressway, burned for two hours, killing two boys: 13-year-old Brian Harvey and his 6-year-old brother, Derrick.

Neighbors spotted two local girls at the scene: 16-year-old Frances Newsome and 14-year-old Trina Garnett. But according to early reports in the Delaware County Daily Times, “the immediate focus” was Trina, a “mysterious girl” with a “grudge” against Sylvia Harvey, the boys’ mother. Investigators theorized that she had broken a kitchen window and climbed through, lighting matches throughout the first floor of the house and then escaping before it went up in flames. On September 3, Trina was arrested and charged with homicide, arson, conspiracy and burglary. She was held without bail; police told reporters she would be tried as an adult.

The youngest of twelve kids, Trina was known as a slow child. She had a very low IQ and couldn’t read or write. Kids made fun of her for sucking her fingers. Her mother died when Trina was 9, and her father was a violent alcoholic capable of unthinkable cruelty. (Sworn affidavits describe, in addition to horrific abuse against his wife and kids, how he once beat the family dog to death with a hammer as Trina watched, then made his children clean up its remains.) From the time Trina was young, she was mostly cared for by her siblings: among them, Edith (or Edy), the eldest, who took over her mother’s responsibilities, and twin sisters Lynn and Linda, just a year older than Trina. In and out of homelessness, Trina and the twins slept in cars and abandoned buildings, washing their clothes in police stations and foraging for food wherever they could, including from trash cans.

When she was 11, Trina was sent by her grandmother to Allentown State Hospital for mental treatment; she was discharged at 13 against the advice of her doctor and stopped taking her medication.
Following the fire, prison officials requested she be given a psychiatric evaluation, after which she was deemed unfit for trial and hospitalized. A second evaluation yielded a diagnosis of schizophrenia. But a third assessment, just a few weeks later, deemed her competent to stand trial. Her lawyer did not challenge the decision. Nor did he challenge the prosecutor’s successful push to try Trina as an adult. (He would later be jailed and disbarred.) Trina was tried in March 1977. Trial transcripts have been lost, but it’s clear that she took the stand as the sole witness for the defense. Frances Newsome was the key witness for the prosecution, telling the jury Trina had set the fire as revenge on Sylvia Harvey for forbidding her sons to play with her.

Trina was found guilty of arson, two counts of second-degree murder and “causing a catastrophe.” The conviction sealed her fate. Had she been facing the death penalty, she would have had the right to introduce mitigating evidence, according to a Supreme Court ruling the previous year striking down mandatory death sentences as cruel and unusual punishment. But no such right extended to defendants facing mandatory life sentences. In Pennsylvania this meant that Trina’s age, severe mental problems, history of abuse and neglect, and, most crucially, rehabilitative potential were not up for discussion. Bound by the state’s mandatory sentencing statutes, on July 7, 1977, Delaware County Judge Howard Reed handed down two life terms plus up to forty years in prison. He called her case “one of the saddest I’ve ever seen” and expressed worry that there was “no facility whatsoever to take care of these few juveniles in desperate need of a secure, safe and meaningful facility.”

His words would prove prescient. Trina had barely begun her sentence at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) at Muncy when she was raped by a prison guard. She got pregnant and delivered the baby, which was taken into foster care. Trina’s sister Brenda (who died in 2003) eventually won custody of the child. His name is Rodney.

Today, Trina is one of approximately 470 prisoners in Pennsylvania serving life without parole for crimes they committed as teenagers. In thirty-five years the state has gone from holding a small handful of juvenile lifers with no chance at release to holding the highest number in the country. Nationwide, the number stands at around 2,589; of these, only a small fraction—seventy-nine—were sentenced for crimes committed when they were 14 or younger. Eighteen are in Pennsylvania.
But an upcoming Supreme Court decision could give these prisoners a second chance. On March 20 the Court heard oral arguments in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs, two cases involving lifers who were 14 when they committed murder. At the heart of their defense is the argument that regardless of the crime, 14 is too young to be discarded as beyond repair. Teens are impulsive, prone to risky behavior and susceptible to peer pressure, and the youngest among them are light-years from mental maturity. “At fourteen,” the Miller petition argues, “the major transformation in brain structure that will result in a sophisticated system of circuitry between the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain, enabling adults to exercise cognitive control over their behavior, is barely underway.”

The same science on teenage brains provided the basis for the Court’s 2010 ruling in Graham v. Florida, which struck down life without parole for youthful offenders in nonhomicide crimes. That case turned on the Court’s 2005 ruling, in Roper v. Simmons, that outlawed the death penalty for juveniles. Roper established “that because juveniles have lessened culpability, they are less deserving of the most severe punishments,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote. Moreover, “when compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile offender who did not kill or intend to kill has a twice diminished moral culpability.”

Graham led to a wave of appeals from people serving sentences of life without parole for second-degree and felony murder—in which someone participates in a fatal crime but is not the actual killer—on the basis that they, too, lacked intent to kill. Among them was Trina. Not only did she have no intention of starting a fire, her lawyers argued; she “could not even form the specific intent to kill” because of her mental limitations. Her appeal was denied. But that of Arkansas prisoner Kuntrell Jackson—who was part of a robbery during which another teen killed a woman with a sawed-off shotgun—is now before the Court.
Combined, Miller and Jackson give the justices much to grapple with. Beyond questions of culpability and the very young age at which the defendants were sentenced—a rarity their attorney, Bryan Stevenson, says constitutes cruel and unusual punishment—both, like Trina, were subject to mandatory sentencing statutes. In fact, as Stevenson told the justices during oral arguments, “The overwhelming majority of those sentences come from a handful of states” with such statutes. In Pennsylvania, he said by way of example, “we have 14-year-old children…convicted of clearly unintentional killings that have been subject to mandatory life without parole.”

The role of mandatory sentencing seemed to trouble the Court. “What is the justification for not giving the defendant any opportunity to point to mitigating features in his lack of development, in his age, in his upbringing, et cetera?” asked Justice Stephen Breyer during Miller. “That to me is a difficult question.” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seemed disturbed by the total lack of hope for release for very young prisoners. “I mean, essentially, you’re making a 14-year-old a throwaway person,” she said during Jackson.

For many, another difficult question is how to approach cases that, unlike Trina’s, involve intentional, brutal violence. Evan Miller, for example, joined an older teen in beating a neighbor with a baseball bat and setting fire to his trailer. But as Stevenson told the Court, teens’ “deficits in judgment are not crime-specific”; the same mitigating factors apply. Like Trina, Miller had an abusive, alcoholic father and suffered from severe mental problems. He tried to kill himself several times starting at the age of 5. Kuntrell Jackson also had a life full of “mitigating factors”: as Stevenson told the Court, he “was born in a household where there was nothing but violence…. His grandmother shot his uncle. His mother shot a neighbor. His brother shot someone.”

In March the Sentencing Project released the results of the first national survey of prisoners sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile. Its scope was significant: 1,579 prisoners, or about 60 percent of the total population, had responded. Of those prisoners, 79 percent reported “witnessing violence in their homes.” Almost half “experienced physical abuse, including 79.5% of girls.” Poverty, neglect and trauma were consistent themes.

* * *

I met Trina’s sisters Edy and Lynn and her brother Gary in Harrisburg the Sunday before the oral arguments. Most of the family has moved there to be closer to SCI Muncy. Lynn brought pictures: Trina as a smiling little girl in braids and a pale pink dress, Trina outside Allentown Hospital in winter, Trina and her son during a visit in 1987. The most recent, taken in April 2011, showed her with Rodney, now a tall broad-shouldered man in his 30s, against a backdrop of trees and puffy white clouds. Rodney’s arm is around his mother, and she is smiling. Her hair is gray around the edges. The border features a cartoon rabbit in a bowtie saying, “Hoppy Easter.”

At 50, Trina suffers from multiple sclerosis. She can hardly walk and relies on a wheelchair. “She requires a lot of assistance,” says Edy. “She has lost a lot of weight.” At one point she was sent to SCI Cambridge Springs, a minimum-security facility with better medical care than Muncy, but the distance—250 miles from Harrisburg—was too great a burden for her family, so she asked to be transferred back.

When she was younger, Trina participated in prison athletics and schooling, as well as a program that allowed her to train puppies to be service dogs. “She adores dogs,” says Lynn. But cellblocks that are eligible for the program are not wheelchair accessible. Her sentence prevents her from taking part in other activities. Because they are considered the “worst of the worst,” prisoners serving life without parole are often ineligible for prison programs.

The first time Trina’s siblings visited her, they were all adults. Because they were scattered in different places at the time, they have no recollection of the fire or the trial. “I never ever went to any of her hearings because we weren’t aware,” Edy explains. They do know that Trina insists she did not mean to set the fire and that Frances helped boost her into the window, which she couldn’t have climbed through alone. But at trial, she was ill-equipped. “I don’t think she had a full understanding of what was happening,” says Edy. “No, definitely not.”
“We all knew Trina was different,” says Lynn. Growing up, “she was so far behind in reading and activities—she was like a baby.” While Lynn and Linda were dressing themselves, recalls Edy, “Trina couldn’t do that….She would have her shoes on backwards.”

When Trina was 5, she accidentally set herself on fire. It’s not clear how—she was probably playing with matches—but as Edy recalls, she was sharing a bed with Trina and woke up. “I felt the heat going across my foot and [saw] the light.” Their brother Wayne ran into the room “because I was hollering ‘There’s a fire! There’s a fire!’… When he got there, he realized it was Trina—she was in flames.” Trina was badly burned and left with disfiguring scars.

In 1982 Trina’s lawyer sought a new trial on the grounds that she had received inadequate representation. At a 1983 hearing challenging her competency at trial—and overseen by her sentencing judge, Howard Reed—court-appointed psychiatrist Mark Shulkin described Trina’s profound mental issues. During a recent examination, she had not known what year it was or how to add three and two. She could not remember who her lawyer was minutes after being told his name. Even if Trina lit the matches at the Harvey home years before, Dr. Shulkin said, “to foresee that it would turn into a fire in which two children could not escape and would die….was thinking beyond her capability.”

But citing the accident when she was 5, the DA pressed Dr. Shulkin to admit that Trina would have known the matches could cause harm to the Harveys. “In view of her having set herself on fire and suffered really serious injuries,” Dr. Shulkin conceded under questioning, “she would know that setting a fire could cause serious damage to people.” At the same hearing, the DA seized on Dr. Shulkin’s description of how, according to a counselor who knew Trina as a child, “if she was angry at another child…she might destroy a favorite toy or some property of the child…to make that child be unhappy.”

“And under that circumstance she would form an intent to revenge against that person,” the DA said.

“Yes,” the psychiatrist responded.

Trina’s request for a new trial was denied.

* * *

Pennsylvania was once at the forefront of the rehabilitation movement, one that extended to juveniles—albeit along starkly racial lines. In 1828 the House of Refuge of Philadelphia opened as an alternative to adult prisons for youth offenders. But for two decades, only white children were sent there for rehabilitation; black children were often sent to adult prisons. The House of Refuge for Colored Children was opened at the end of 1849, at the behest of progressive reformers.

Houses of refuge eventually gave way to juvenile prisons. The Juvenile Court Act of 1903 established juvenile courts for minor crimes; in the 1930s their jurisdiction would be extended to all crimes except murder for defendants under 18. But as juvenile courts shed their paternalistic origins in favor of formal due process—Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Act of 1972 codified such rights—notions of rehabilitation as a central goal of the criminal justice system were eroding. The law-and-order rhetoric of Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign and his declaration of the “war on drugs” in 1971 were followed by racebaiting predictions in the ’80s and ’90s that a generation of “teenage superpredators” would lay waste to cities across the country. States passed a wave of tough-on-crime laws allowing children to be tried as adults for a variety of offenses. In 1995 Pennsylvania amended the Juvenile Act to narrow the jurisdiction of juvenile courts, shuttling more youths into the adult system.

The ramped-up sentencing of children as adults had a disparate racial impact, reflecting long-held attitudes that kids of color are more criminal in nature and have less rehabilitative potential. Today, black and Latino teens are far more likely to be sentenced to life without parole, particularly for killing a white person. Of the 13- and 14-year-olds sent to die in prison, 70 percent are, like Trina, kids of color.

* * *

Today in Pennsylvania, a child of any age can be charged with first- or second-degree murder and automatically sent to the adult system—where the burden is on the defense to prove the child should be tried as a juvenile. Upon conviction, life without parole is mandatory. There are virtually no avenues for release.

“The only way that anybody can hope to get out at any point is through the commutation process,” says William DiMascio, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, which dates back to the 1700s. And that’s a long shot. Under reforms implemented by Governor Tom Ridge in the ’90s, the state’s five-member Board of Pardons must recommend commutations unanimously. The attorney general and lieutenant governor both sit on the board. “Being politically active and ambitious,” says DiMascio, “it’s become almost automatic that they vote no rather than take the chance that letting somebody out will result in some crime that they’re going to get blamed for.”

DiMascio met Trina at SCI Muncy a couple of years ago as part of a routine session with prisoners seeking advice on the commutation process. “She actually came in a wheelchair,” he recalls. “I was a little surprised about that, because I was not aware of her condition…. I remember distinctly asking her how she thought she could support herself [if she got out]. And I think she said that she felt like she could get a job at McDonald’s.”

“We have a number of cases like this,” DiMascio says, “where you really wonder what interest is being served by just keeping people in a prison situation.”
A number of groups are devoted to reforming youth sentencing. But in the realm of criminal justice activism, life sentences have not been a focus (indeed, many opponents of the death penalty have pushed life without parole as the best alternative to executions). “A good deal of [advocacy] focuses on removing low-level, nonviolent offenders from jails and prisons because they comprise such a large proportion of the incarcerated population,” says Ashley Nellis, an analyst with the Sentencing Project. Whereas the obvious excesses of the drug war have met resistance, when it comes to violent crimes, even young defendants have comparatively few advocates in their corner.

* * *

The spot where the Harveys lived is now a vacant lot. On a Saturday in April, a minivan was parked in it, surrounded by debris. A number of houses in the neighborhood were boarded up, some with foreclosure notices out front.
Linda Garnett lives two miles from Spruce Street in the adjoining suburb of Brookhaven. When I arrive at her home, she is holding a set of jacks. Only one of the red balls is left. As she tells it, young Trina was playing with them, and in a fit of frustration, bit the other ball in half. Jacks are not allowed in the visiting room at Muncy. But at home they are Linda’s touchstone, the single item she salvaged from her years with Trina.

“Everyone who knew Trina, if they’re not deceased, they probably can’t remember her,” says Linda. Sometimes she’ll run into former inmates who recognize her from Trina’s photos. “And then they’ll say, ‘You know, I used to be at Muncy with Trina—and she’s all right.’”

Linda goes to Muncy with Edy, Lynn and her brothers every few months. Like them, she describes joyful visits where they relive the best parts of their childhood. “We still hug and kiss and rub our faces together like we did,” she says. They buy her candy bars and soda—“things that will make a child happy.” When not reminiscing, “we talk about the things she would like to have done. She would like to have graduated from school, and be able to pick out her graduation dress—you know, things like that. Things like a normal teenager would have wanted to do. Have a home. Be able to pick out furniture for her own home.”

If the Supreme Court decides to limit life without parole for juveniles—whether by drawing a line above age 14, or striking down mandatory sentencing statutes, even abolishing it altogether—Trina would be entitled to a resentencing hearing. Her family hopes this will be her ticket home.

“We would probably all want to take her,” says Linda, smiling, adding that Trina would likely choose to go to Harrisburg, where Rodney lives. Regardless, Linda says, “she would never worry about a place to stay—ever.”

Liliana Segura is Associate Editor of The Nation. She also writes about prisons and harsh sentencing. Follow her on Twitter at @lilianasegura.

5 Things That Puts America to Shame

AlterNet.org

NEWS & POLITICS  

Buzzflash at TruthOut / By Paul Buchheit

5 Things That Put America to Shame

The golden door on the Statue of Liberty seems to have an invisible hand holding it shut.

May 14, 2012  |  

 

 

 

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education and financial industries.

1. We're Near the Bottom of the Developed World in Children's Health and Safety

According to a 2007 The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report, the US ranked last among 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the US 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the US ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

2. We've Betrayed the Young People Who Were Advised to Stay in School

Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.

As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.

Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet, delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs - jobs that "don't yet exist."

3. The Main Source of Middle-Class Wealth Has Been Largely Wiped Out


American homeowners owe almost as much as the students, with $700 billion of debt over and above the value of their homes.

This removes the only source of wealth for middle America, especially for blacks and Hispanics. Remarkably, for every dollar of non-home wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.

So when minority families were specifically targeted for high-risk, subprime loans that could be re-packaged and sold for a quick short-term profit, most of their assets were erased. Median wealth fell 66% for Hispanic households and 53% for black households. For whites the decline was 16%.

With a disturbing note of irony, Sanford Weill - the banker largely responsible for the reversal of the mortgage-protecting Glass-Steagall Act - was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for "extraordinary accomplishment and a call to serve."

4. We Give Prison Sentences for Smoking Marijuana, but Not for Billion-Dollar Fraud


About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003, in California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two non-violent offenses.

How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no incentive for rehabilitation.
As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated countless American lives "get out of jail free." The savings and loan fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100 times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings services to label it AAA and then bet against their own financial creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements involving fines and "monitoring" periods.

5. You Can Have Health Care, If You Pay for It


A recent Commonwealth Fund study compared US health care spending to 12 other OECD countries. The data shows that reducing our costs to the median level of spending among the OECD countries would save us $1.5 trillion a year, more than our entire deficit.

Unfortunately, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and hospital administrators won't hear of it. There's too much money to be made. Bypass surgery in the US costs two to three times more than in Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Cataract surgery costs four times more.
That's if you can pay for it. There are currently about 50 million uninsured Americans. At the other extreme are $2,400 oxymoronic penthouse hospital suites complete with butler and grand piano. Or, for those who don't get out much, emergency rooms in the home, with private cell-phone access to "concierge doctors."

Inequality in our country is so severe that 120,000 health care workers could have been hired with the salary paid to one man. That's a $40,000 salary for 40 health care workers for every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States. Instead, $5 billion dollars went to one man who reportedly made his first big haul ($4 billion, in 2007) by conspiring with Goldman Sachs in the above-mentioned short sale subterfuge.

The result of ignoring the health needs of the greater population, according to a report in the Annual Review of Public Health, is that "the health rankings of the United States have declined substantially when compared with other nations."

Conclusion


Privatization simply hasn't worked for health care, mortgage banking, higher education, or prison management. There is little incentive for profit-motivated firms to invest in disadvantaged or underemployed Americans. That's why taxes are necessary - to provide for the common good, and to return some of the gains from 60 years of productivity to the great majority of Americans who contributed to our growth. Unfortunately, the golden door on the Statue of Liberty seems to have an invisible hand holding it shut.

Paul Buchheit is a professor with City Colleges of Chicago, founder of fightingpoverty.org and co-founder of Global Initiative Chicago. He is the editor and main contributor to the forthcoming book, "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press).

Rand's Rugged Individualist Myth

Acronym Required

Acronym Required observes science and technology policy.

Rand's Rugged Individualist Myth

By a.r.e. on March 12, 2009 5:59 PM
© 2004-2012 Acronymrequired.com 

 

Quarry in The Quarry

  This is a continuation of our last post "The Galt Gestalt". We admit, one post is probably enough, Ayn Rand has been memorialized quite enough, thank-you very much. Companies like the demolition contractor at the World Trade Towers site proudly name themselves "John Galt this" and "Fountainhead" that. They also name themselves after Howard Roark, and at least one company, an architectural design firm in Minneapolis, named an imaginary "Howard Roark" as a senior partner of the firm.

Thousands of books and hundreds of institutes all over the world celebrate Rand's ideas -- the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, the Ayn Rand Institute, Ayn Rand Society, RebirthofReason.com, Liberty Institute, AtlasShrugged.com, The Atlas Society, The Objectivist Center, Objectivsm 101, Objectivism Reference Center, ObjectivistAcademiccenter.org, AynRandInstitute.ca, and so on.
With all that, who needs more Ayn Rand stuff? Well, the recent outpouring of Randism might benefit from more "balance". The gushing accolades over "Atlas Shrugged" at FOX News and cable news channels -- by announcers who Americanize Rand's first name to "Ann", instead of "Ayn" rhymes with "all mine", or as Rand would say, "swine", might benefit from a more adult reading of her book.

In our post "The Galt Gestalt" we talked about modern day Ayn Rand acolytes -- those who maybe didn't have the opportunity to write books with her like Alan Greenspan, but who still forward her ideas and writing. We admit, we at Acronym Required did read her books -- in junior high school -- as the fiction they are. So we're always surprised that full grown adults actually say that Rand's half a century old books foresaw America's current economic state.
In the "Galt Gestalt", we reviewed the movie "The Fountainhead", with its fallible characters Howard Roark and Dominique, set among quarries and "modern" 1940's buildings -- all Roark's "creations". We challenged Rand's portrayal of Roark as a "creator" rather than a destroyer or terrorist, and questioned how such daft writing by could be misinterpreted for 2009 economic wisdom. We observed that today's coterie of Rand admirers pick and choose the parts of her philosophy they like and disregard the bits that don't fit their political agenda -- like her complete intolerance of mixing religion with politics. Indeed, she warned Reagan on mixing politics with religion:

"What we are seeing is the medievalism of the Puritans all over again, but without their excuse of ignorance....The New Right is not the voice of Americanism. It is the voice of thought control attempting to take over in this country and pervert and undo the actual American revolution....."

You don't hear too much talk of that these days, do you?

Was Roark a "Creator"? Or a Terrorist?
 
Some executives say that "The Fountainhead" is their very favorite work, but maybe they never read it, or maybe they never got to the end. Because incongruously, in "The Fountainhead", Howard Roark blows up buildings with explosives, then defends his crimes by telling a jury some fantastic gobbledygook about great "creators" who stood up to all the men. Each individual scientist or inventor, he intones

"lived for himself. And only by living for himself was he able to achieve the things which are the glory of mankind. Such is the nature of achievement..."

How can a novel where the main character dynamites buildings be seen as a blueprint for America, a nation that reviles people who even associate with those who associated with those who threatened to blow up buildings? There's some irony to the fact that former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who is actually a respected professor and Chicago community service leader, is labeled a "terrorist" by the same people who hold fictional dynamite wielder Howard Roark as a "hero".


Rand-ites Who Transcend Rand's Scorn
 
Perhaps these people who adulate Rand, the creator of the hero terrorist are just fantastic hypocrites. It's true, everyone, including us, capably cherry-picks their evidence. So just as Rand's most fervent admirers cherry-pick her ideas, she cherry-picked her evidence, her ideals, and her followers. Today's Randites are consistent then in their love, because Rand consistently scorned those who most fervently embraced her ideas. Do they know that Rand dismissed libertarians as "a random collection of emotional hippies-of-the-right who seek to play at politics without philosophy"? It's a dysfunctional relationship, for sure, but they loved and love her just as Howard Roark pined for Dominique in the quarry in the "The Fountainhead" and made statutes in her image while she married other men.

Why the enduring adoration? Why are sales of "Atlas Shrugged" still booming, aside from the fact that it's impressively thick but vapidly light read -- a delirious combination of Harlequin romance and "For Dummies" -- perfect airplane reading? "Thick book you have there..."

Americans and The Myth of the Rugged Enterprising Individual
 
What is this persevering and hypocritical adulation of Rand? Is it the refusal to let go of the myth of the rugged individual? Historically, the US had some very hardy Americans, Teddy Roosevelt, for instance. Read accounts of his Amazon exploration and shudder at his rugged manliness. But the US and its corporate economy certainly hasn't been a wunderkind of noble individualists recently.
Way back in 1984, Roger Rosenblatt wrote about this strange phenomenon, asking in Time magazine's ("The Rugged Individual Rides Again"): "Why the pretense--why the evident pleasure--in seeing the country as a collection of loners?"
 
Now, twenty-five years later, the myth may be less intact, but politicians still pimp it. It has served the GOP well since Ronald Reagan rode in with his "Morning in America" theme. Perhaps it made sense for Reagan then, 30 or so years ago, because Reagan came up in Hollywood at the same time as Ayn Rand. He seemed to be acting out his fantasy part as the rugged individualist, with his ranch, the far-away (albeit perhaps diseased) look in his eye, and his incessant portrayal of individuals with mythical powers -- "Tear down this wall!" (- another myth).

Two decades later GW Bush didn't ride horses around a ranch like Reagan, but he did purchase that dried out piece of land in Texas, where he would gamely pull on gloves -- Ironclad Icon Series Extreme Duty^TM gloves no doubt -- over soft citified hands so he could hack at brush for rolling cameras. The American rugged male image is very particular, you see, and can't be properly projected from the decks of a Kennebunkport yacht.

Rugged Individual Jumps the Shark
 
If the whole American rugged individualism was seen as "hypocritical" by the mainstream magazine Time, over two decades ago in 1984, it's even more far-fetched played out by GW Bush. And when Bobby Jindal took a stab at the iconic myth the other day the whole idea jumped the shark.
Talking about how he went down to the docks after Hurricane Katrina and saved some people threatened by bureaucracy Jindal deadpanned:

"Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people. There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens."

It took mere hours, if not minutes, for people to uncloak Jindal's lies. You see, for Americans, "enterprising spirit" has been exploited so much that Americans can be skeptical and cynical, especially when it involves someone that doesn't quite look the part.

Interestingly though, while everyone attacked the part of Jindal's story about the Katrina survivors when they found out that Jindal wasn't on the scene at all, the larger myths that his tale served stayed preposterously intact. First, despite his claim, there is no bureaucracy in the US that impedes "enterprising spirit". There is bureaucracy without a doubt. But the federal government largely enables and serves interests of business and corporations, foremost, property rights and laws. Occasionally, like with the Clean Air regulations, the federal government attempts to protect individuals. Obviously, as Jindal's talk unraveled into lies, we recognized just how fantastic the notion that he's the rugged leader leading all the rugged individuals.

Rugged Individual or a Cog in the Machine
 
What's interesting about Rand's perseverance as an American male fantasy is that we're so far from the Cold War era in which Rand became a political fixture. Nevertheless the rugged individual myth is one that the American people still cling to. This myth still matters because it not only nourishes the GOP, it feeds GDP.

Every day docile citizens drive off to jobs in their all-terrain SUVs, which perhaps keeps all these workers thinking about how "rugged" they are. Politicians and businesses and economists push the conceit since its certainly an easier populist sell than all the proceeding political-economic models -- monarchy, colonialism, feudalism, slavery, etc. But the myth is outdated.
A global economy needs global leaders, and individuals who work together as "teams", as annoying as that concept is. Today, the enemy is certainly not "the collective", although that might have been a believable enemy for someone who immigrated from the Soviet Union half a century ago. Nor is the enemy "the government", which has secured property laws, patent law, corporate law, free trade, privatization, and an entire infrastructure that serves capitalism and private enterprise. There is no salient enemy. Except perhaps terrorists who explode and burn buildings -- like Roark.

Of course that is not what we hear from media because there would be no television news if not for enemies and wars, and if the market did not first go up, then come down, and if there were not Democrats who opposed Republicans and Republicans who opposed Democrats. How could we go to all our boring jobs day after day if we did not have the network news anchors to break things up, with their histrionics, their drama, and their enemies? This eases the boredom and it helps us feel whole and human, even as so much of what humans do is totally dehumanizing. But lets separate entertainment from information and policy. We are not rugged individuals.
 
Rand & Marx
 
I previously described how Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal, like many Rand fans, thought the fiction of "Atlas Shrugged" was "eerily similar" to today's events.

But if anyone believes Rand predicted economic events of today more than half a century ago, you should read more carefully to see how many predictions she made that were just plain wrong. Adjust your attitude slightly and Ayn Rand is no more than a cheap novelist who coincidentally, seemed to get a lot of her ideas from Karl Marx.

On economic ideas, her books advocate capitalism, but her ideas were bounded by her experience, that is, Bolshevik history and the Cold War. Some people see Lenin in her work but it's Marx, whose philosophy Rand opposed mightily, who she seems most often quote. Both Karl Marx and Rand ruminated on the higher purpose that humans sought through fighting nature with labor. For instance, compare Marx's words about the purpose of man, and compare those of Rands's Howard Roark in "The Fountainhead".

• Karl Marx said: "He [man] opposes himself to Nature as one of her own forces. in order to appropriate Nature's productions in a form adapted to his own wants."
• Howard Roark said: "The creator's concern is the conquest of nature".

Sixty years ago when Rand wrote her epic stories, humans were still ensconced in what we would dub today as "a war on nature". Indeed many still farmed and fished, though far less than their ancestors. But now in the 21st century humans have decimated so many ecosystems, how can we perpetuate the belief that we humans don't have the upper hand? In fact, our domination is so complete that the North and South poles are collapsing back in on us. Paradoxically, nature still presents challenges, but it's global warming, which is really a fight against ourselves. Our 21st century reality is vastly different than what Rand and Marx knew. Do we benefit as a society from compelling individuals to prove their worth in big highway cruisers?

In addition to their "man against nature" framework, Marx and Rand shared other constructs. Marx had his class struggle as do Rand's followers. Today the internet swirls with talk about "Going Galt", the folly that professional workers should walk off the job if the tax rate increases. Marx and Rand also both used architects to illustrate their vision of the ideal laborer, loner builders who worked for themselves, strictly for their own purposes, for the sake of work.

• Karl Marx, writing on how bees build intricate hives noted, "...what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own..." 
• Howard Roark said: "Throughout the centuries, there were men who took first steps down new roads, armed with nothing but their own vision...His truth was his only motive. His work was his only goal. His creation...gave form to his truth. I am an architect.

Marx bemoaned the fetishization of labor, the degradation of man's work to capital. Similarly, Rand's architect worked motivated by his vision, his creation, his truth. Neither were motivated by pay, never mind taxes. If there is a class struggle, its not against the government, which is printing money to save large corporations as we speak. Most Americans work for these corporations, and even if they're a self-employed electrician, their income is completely entwined with the banks. There are few "creations" to speak of unless the banks making financial instruments counts, and as we've learned, putting rugged individualist cowboys into the world of finance can do real harm.

Ayn Rand and CEOs -- She Completes Them & How Swiftly they Swoon
 
Rand endures partly because she's not part of the curriculum. It's a not so secret society for those who might well have shunned economics. Economics departments don't include Rand in their curricula, yet hundreds of people outside of academia acknowledge how much Ayn Rand influences them. Apparently it doesn't matter to her fans that "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" are cheap potboilers full of hypocritical ideas antithetical to the modern economy.

In a 2007 article, the New York Times interviewed John A. Allison, CEO of BB&T, one of the largest banks in the US, who said of "Atlas Shrugged".

"I know from talking to a lot of Fortune 500 C.E.O.'s that 'Atlas Shrugged' has had a significant effect on their business decisions...It offers something other books don't: the principles that apply to business and to life in general. I would call it complete."

And there I was thinking all that math I learned in economics and business classes was so important, when all I needed to read was Rand's overly thick Harlequin romance?

Then in January, 2009, the Times reported that Allison's company BB&T profit fell 26% in the 4th quarter of 2008, and so the bank accepted $3.1 billion in government money". Poof? Just like that? Enterprising spirit of America gone? Rand out the window? To hell with "principles"? Mr. Allison can you comment? Should we shelve Rand next to Marx, now that it's 2009 not 1945?

Worshipping the individual and the market may be what business leaders say they like to hear, but when push comes to shove, it more often than not thrown out as soon as something more self-serving appears.

The American Image Dilemma
 
Rand's ideas don't make for successful individuals any more than they make successful businesses. A few years ago Americans strongly believed in their rugged individualism, as they flipped houses and extracted equity and took out big mortgages from aggrandizing lenders. Now they're feeling a little chastised, mad even. Americans are now in 2009 caught up in the throes of a financial behemoth of their collective making, generated by private banking and enterprises they don't understand. But ironically, what better time to encourage them to feel like rugged individuals again?

But, although "rugged individualism" is evidently music to emasculated workers' ears, it's hard to buy. The USA is, after all, a country where 30% of the people are obese. Rugged doesn't usually come in size 3X stretchy pants. As well, Rand preached "reason" not religion, but 50% of the people believe in the Creator, not the "creator", and will tell you that humans roamed the earth with dinosaurs 6000 years ago. In 2009, the fact that the GOP tries to lead by encouraging this pathetic a level Randian thinking from its citizens doesn't bode well for the nation of "knowledge workers".

But the GOP may be unable to come up with anything else. The party seems superglued to the rugged individual image and in it's service, they've forwarded the most unlikely series of messengers -- Joe the Plumber, Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele, Sarah Palin. Nice try, attempting to be both the party for "one-armed midgets", and the party of rugged individualists a la Reagan? Seriously Republicans and America in general, the individualists, the midgets, and everyone else deserves a more up to date and congruous image.

Of course in the frightening series of public relations debacles by the GOP and their media, Rand actually plays a tiny role. The rugged pioneering individualist myth is a strained fictional construct. But unfortunately, Rand fans and some in the GOP do have one winning strategy, which is to promote the facile idea that far, far less government is better (except military and police). It's a winning strategy because the US (and every other state) will never have no regulation. Government regulation is what ensures "free markets". Therefore Ayn Rand fans have a permanent platform in their cries for less government.

Like the unlikely longevity of the myth of the rugged individualist, now it's painfully obvious that deregulation is not the answer. But it's child's play for Randians to argue that George W. Bush was no Ayn Rand, and we need still less regulation. When we examine the notion however, it's clear that this too is part and parcel of old plot lines from outdated fiction. Although mid-century may be faddish and fine for furniture, if orange plastic chairs and aqua blue polyester are your thing, by any measure, it doesn't work for economic policy.

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The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives' Favorite -- And Most Dangerous -- Fiction

AlterNet.org

VISIONS  

AlterNet / By Sara Robinson

The Self-Made Myth: Debunking Conservatives' Favorite -- And Most Dangerous -- Fiction

A new book makes a strong case that nobody ever makes it on their own in America.

April 25, 2012  |  

 

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore

The self-made myth is one of the most cherished foundation stones of the conservative theology. Nurtured by Horatio Alger and generations of beloved boys' stories, It sits at the deep black heart of their entire worldview, where it provides the essential justification for a great many other common right-wing beliefs. It feeds the accusation that government is evil because it only exists to redistribute wealth from society's producers (self-made, of course) and its parasites (who refuse to work). It justifies conservative rage against progressives, who are seen as wanting to use government to forcibly take away what belongs to the righteous wealthy. It's piously invoked by hedge fund managers and oil billionaires, who think that being required to reinvest any of their wealth back into the public society that made it possible is "punishing success." It's the foundational belief on which all of Ayn Rand's novels stand.

If you've heard it once from your Fox-watching uncle, you've probably heard it a hundred times. "The government never did anything for me, dammit," he grouses. "Everything I have, I earned. Nobody ever handed me anything. I did it all on my own. I'm a self-made man."

He's just plain wrong. Flat-out, incontrovertibly, inarguably wrong. So profoundly wrong, in fact, that we probably won't be able to change the national discourse on taxes, infrastructure, education, government investment, technology policy, transportation, welfare, or our future prospects as a country until we can effectively convince the country of the monumental wrongness of this one core point. 

The Built-Together Realty
Brian Miller and Mike Lapham have written the book that lays out the basic arguments we can use to begin to set things right. The Self-Made Myth: The Truth About How Government Helps Individuals and Businesses Succeed is a clear, concise, easy-to-read-and-use summary that brings forward a far more accurate argument about government's central role in creating the conditions for economic prosperity and personal opportunity.

Miller, the executive director of United For a Fair Economy, and Lapham, a co-founder of UFE's Responsible Wealth project, argue that the self-made myth absolves our economic leaders from doing anything about inequality, frames fair wages as extortion from deserving producers, and turns the social safety net into a moral hazard that can only promote laziness and sloth. They argue that progressives need to overwrite this fiction with the far more supportable idea of the "built-together reality," which points up the truth that nobody in America ever makes it alone. Every single private fortune can be traced back to basic public investments that have, as Warren Buffet argues in the book, created the most fertile soil on the planet for entrepreneurs to succeed.

To their credit, Miller and Lapham don't ask us to take this point on faith. Right out of the gate, they regale us with three tales of famous "self-made" men -- Donald Trump, Ross Perot and the Koch brothers, whose own stories put the lie to the myth. (This section alone is worth the price of admission -- these guys so did not make it on their own!) Once those treasured right-wing exemplars are thoroughly discredited, the middle of the book offers a welcome corrective: interviews with 14 wealthy Americans -- including well-known names like Warren Buffet, Ben Cohen, Abigail Disney, and Amy Domini, who are very explicit about the ways in which government action laid the groundwork for their success. Over and over, these people credit their wealth to:

* An excellent education received in public schools and universities. Jerry Fiddler of Wind River Software (you're probably running his stuff in your cell phone or car) went to the University of Chicago, and started his computer career at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Bookseller Thelma Kidd got her start at Texas Tech and the University of Michigan. Warren Buffet went to the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Nebraska as an undergrad. And beyond that: several interviewees paid for their educations with federal Pell Grants and Stafford loans.

Over and over, the point gets made: public universities -- and the good public schools that feed them, and the funding programs that put them within financial reach -- have hatched millions of American entrepreneurs who might not have been fledged without that opportunity to get an education.

 * The support of the Small Business Administration and other government agencies. Ben Cohen notes that almost all the business training he and Jerry Greenfield had came from the extension courses at the University of Vermont and Penn State, and small brochures produced by the SBA. And as they spun up, they also got an Urban Development Action Grant from the federal government. Other interviewees started their businesses in incubators or other quarters provided or arranged by their local city governments.

* A strong regulatory environment that protected their businesses from being undercut by competitors willing to cut corners, and ensured that their manufacturing inputs are of consistently high quality. Glynn Lloyd of Boston's City Fresh Foods points out that nobody in the food business can get by without reliable sources of clean water; and that the USDA inspection process is an important piece of his quality control.

* Enforceable copyright and intellectual property laws that enabled them to protect good ideas. Abigail Disney recalls that her father, Roy Disney, and her Uncle Walt made and lost one great cartoon character -- Oswald the Rabbit -- because they didn't have copyright protection. They didn't repeat that mistake when Mickey Mouse was born three years later, launching the Disney empire.

* A robust system of roads, ports, airports, and mass transit that enabled them to reliably move their goods both within the US, and around the world. Kim Jordan of New Belgium Brewing (the makers of Fat Tire beer) points out that "Beer is heavy, and it needs to be transported in vehicles. Certainly, the highway system has been important to New Belgium Brewing." Lloyd also points out that Boston's excellent public transit system enables him to draw on a far wider employee base.

* The government's role in creating the Internet, without which almost no modern company can function. Anirvan Chatterjee built Bookfinder.com (now a subsidiary of Amazon.com), the world's biggest online used-book marketplace, an achievement that wouldn't have been remotely imaginable without DARPA, the establishment and enforcement of common protocols, and significant congressional investment in the 1980s to take the Internet commercial.

* The ability to issue public stock in a fair, reliable, regulated marketplace  -- a benefit that raised the value of several interviewees' companies by about 30 percent overnight. Peter Barnes, founder of Working Assets, spoke with concern about the loss of trust in this system over the past decade. "The corporate scandals [Enron and Worldcom] caused people to stop trusting the numbers that companies were reporting. Imagine how much value is created by trust and the whole system that assures that trust?"

Besides the government, most of those interviewed also locate their companies in the context of a large community of customers they utterly depend on for their success. "It takes a village to raise a business," says Nikhil Arora of Back to the Roots, a sustainable products company that came about through partnerships and grants from UC Berkeley, Peet's Coffee and other interested parties.

Others are quick to acknowledge the contributions of their employees, without whom their companies wouldn't exist. When Gun Denhart and her husband sold their company, children's clothier Hanna Andersson, in 2003, they distributed a healthy portion of the sale proceeds to their employees, prorated on the basis of their length of service.

All businesses exist within a vast network of human connections -- customers, vendors, employees, investors, and the communities that support their work. These stories make it clear: saying you did it all yourself and therefore don't owe anybody anything is about as absurd (and self-centered) as saying that you raised yourself from babyhood, without any input from your parents, and therefore don't have any further obligations to your family.

The Role of Luck and Timing

We all know wealth isn't just a matter of hard work, brains or talent. Most of us probably know some hard-working, brilliant, or extraordinarily talented people who aren't being rewarded at anything close to their true value. So perhaps the most intriguing and useful part of the book is a long discussion of the many other factors that go into making someone wealthy -- factors that are blithely brushed off the table whenever the self-made myth is invoked.

Rich conservatives have to downplay the role of luck. After all, if we think they're just lucky, rather than exceptionally deserving of exceptional wealth, we'll be a lot more justified in taxing their fortunes. But luck -- the fortunate choice of parents, for example, or landing the right job or industry at the right time -- plays a huge role in any individual's success. Timing also matters: most of the great fortunes of the 19th century were accumulated by men born during the 1830s, who were of an age to capitalize on the huge economic boom created by the expansion of the railroads after the Civil War. Likewise, the great tech fortunes almost all belong to people born between 1950 and 1955, who were well-positioned to create pioneering companies in the tech boom of the late 1970s and 1980s. Such innovative times don't come along very often; and being born when the stars lined up just so doesn't make you more entitled. It just makes you luckier.

Because Americans in general like to think we're an equal society, we're also quick to discount the importance of race, gender, appearance, class, upbringing, and other essential forms of social capital that can open doors for people who have it -- and close them on those who don't. The self-made myth allows us to deflect our attention from these critical factors, undermining our determination to level the playing field for those who don't start life with a pocket fat with advantages.

What Changes?


The book winds up with specific policy prescriptions that can bring the built-together reality back into sharper political and cultural focus. The last section shows how abandoning the self-made myth for a built-together reality creates fresh justification for a more progressive income tax, the repeal of the capital gains exemption and raising corporate and inheritance taxes. It also makes a far more compelling philosophical backdrop against which progressives can argue for increased investment in infrastructure, education, a fair minimum wage, a strong social safety net, and better anti-discrimination laws.

But the most striking thing about the book -- implicit throughout, but explicit nowhere -- was the alternative vision of capitalism it offers. Throughout the book, Miller and Lapham seem to be making the tacit case that businesses premised on the built-together reality are simply more fair, more generous, more sustainable, and more humane. While far from perfect (Disney's empire being one case in point), they are, as a group, markedly more aware of the high costs of exploiting their workers, their customers, the economy, or the environment. Owners who believe themselves to be beholden to a community for their success will tend to value and invest back into that community, and they seem to be far more willing to realize when they've got enough and it's time to start giving back.

The implication is clear: if we can interrupt American's long love affair with the self-made myth, we will effectively pull the center tent pole out from under the selfish assumptions that shelter most of the excesses of corporate behavior that characterize our age. This isn't just another point of contention between progressives and conservatives; it's somewhere near the very center of the disconnect between our worldviews. The Self-Made Myth is an essential primer that gives us the language and stories to begin talking about this difference, and the tools to begin to bend that conversation in some new and more hopeful directions.

Sara Robinson, MS, APF is a social futurist and the editor of AlterNet's Vision page. Follow her on Twitter, or subscribe to AlterNet's Vision newsletter for weekly updates.

The Dark Side of America Emerges From the Shadows, Rears its Ugly Head

April 25, 2012 at 14:39:20

The Dark Side of America Emerges From the Shadows, Rears its Ugly Head

By michael payne (about the author)




Dark by codenamezapper.deviantart.com


There is an unsettling element of our society that's always been present. However, it's one that's kept its true nature and intentions partially hidden under the guise of seeming normality. Individuals within that element were seen as somewhat manipulative, authoritarian, overly critical and intolerant of others, and self-righteous, but relatively harmless. In recent times this side of America has emerged as an arrogant, domineering force that is determined to reshape this entire society to fit its own demented ideology.

This is the dark side of America; it's that select element in which morality, ethical behavior, integrity, empathy and honor, among other principles and values, are no longer considered to be of great import. This special breed of Americans no longer even try to hide their true sociopathic nature as they brazenly embrace a doctrine of greed, selfishness, corruption, hatred, a penchant for violence, and a love of war.

But, who, specifically, are these people? How many and what percentage of this nation's population are to be found on this dark side? Well, for starters, when polls are taken on a variety of issues involving important social, economic or political matters it seems as if about 70% of Americans generally are in agreement and there is always somewhere around 30% that favor an entirely opposite view; one that is exemplified by an aggressive, unrelenting, ultra-conservative view of how all American people must live their lives.

We might try to make the case that this 30% of Americans who occupy the dark side are largely     Republicans, but that would not really be fair or totally accurate. Based on Gallup and other polling, Republicans make up about 27% of the total electorate. And to be totally fair not all of them should be accused of being on the dark side because a good number of them are simply misguided, misinformed, politically mind-conditioned people who blindly accept whatever the GOP leadership, Fox News hosts, and Rush Limbaugh tell them.

So this dark side is comprised of a large portion of Republicans but also contains Americans who call themselves independents and, yes, there are more than a few Democrats who fit that category. So, let's get more specific and try to identify those individuals, those groups and organizations who occupy this dark side of America.   They are those:

Who manage the machinery of war and the military empire. In this group are those who generate massive profits from war; those who manufacture the weapons of war that are used to invade and occupy other nations and are sold to nations around the world. Those who make the drones that rain hellfire missiles and death down upon suspected terrorists and innocent civilians alike. To them war is not something that should be engaged in as a last resort after all attempts to settle conflicts peacefully fail. No, war is in their blood, they thrive on it and it is what drives and motivates them.

Who are destroying our manufacturing sector, our plants and our workforce. If Corporate America is allowed to have its way we will, over a period of time, see the entire American manufacturing sector become a permanent part of China, India and other overseas nations. These highly profitable     mega-corporations have no loyalty to this country or its workers. While they would vehemently deny it, their primary objective, in the long run, is to have this nation's entire workforce, at least what's left of it, working for the minimum wage -- or even lower.

Who pose as objective journalists but are really in the business of conditioning the minds of Americans to remain passive and silent even as they see their nation in a state of deterioration; pseudo-journalists on TV, radio and in newspapers who are experts at twisting and manipulating the news to promote the agenda of those who want to control this nation by destroying its democracy. While there are still some respected, objective journalists in America, the profession of journalism has now been contaminated by the few mammoth media empires that control it and use it to spread the doctrine and propaganda of the corporate world.

Who work to eliminate vitally important social programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and others that are in distinct danger to be absorbed and controlled by the political and financial sectors of the dark side. The vast majority of Republicans, joined by some Democrats, together with the masters of corporate finance, are anxious to convert the resources that support and maintain these programs into a part of the gambling operations that go by the name of Wall Street, the stock and bond markets and their speculators.

Who stir up hatred, bigotry, racism, to create deep divisions among the American people. When has America been so very divided by so many opposing elements and factions? Racism, bigotry, homophobia, chauvinism and other manifestations of disdain or hatred of others, instead of being eliminated by a positive evolution of this society, are rapidly increasing. If the news organizations of this nation had acts of hatred and violence removed from their agenda, they would have nothing of real importance to report and they would slowly dry up and wither away.

Who use religion to promote and spread their own brand of polluted political ideology across America. One of the worst terms that I have ever heard is a "sociopathic Christian." Obviously that's not only an oxymoron but it is also a complete possibility because the two words are diametrically opposed. But the term is often used to describe sociopaths who call themselves Christians. And what do we hear from the religious leaders of America, from those should be preaching the message of peace and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you?" Nothing but silence and more silence.

Who shamelessly take corporate $ to keep their political jobs. Pity these weak-kneed, corrupted politicians who have reduced themselves to no more than slaves and facilitators of Corporate America. They live on the dark side of the Congress where funds for the war machine are continuously approved with no discussion or debate, where laws to regulate the financial sector are either watered down or are never even considered; where Corporate America rules with an iron fist, and where this nation's most critical problems have been erased from the Congress' useless agenda.

Who have decided to insult and disrespect the women of America. This is one of the dumbest, most irrational acts in political history. These GOP agents of gender bias and domination have really gone off the deep end as they are in the process of trying to destroy the rights that have taken the women of America so long to obtain; they want to take down Planned Parenthood, eliminate a woman's right to choose, ban the use of contraceptives, and eliminate laws granting equal pay to women, as was recently done by Governor Walker and his Wisconsin GOP controlled legislature. When these political hacks and fools decided to declare war on the women of this nation, they may have committed political suicide; at least we can hope so -- but could America be so very fortunate, so very lucky?

Who blindly support Israel's brutal, overly aggressive military actions in the Middle East and who accept, condone and applaud Israel's cruel and inhuman actions against Palestinians; especially, the barbarous attacks on the people of Gaza. Those who have no sense of empathy or mercy for the Palestinian people who have, for decades, been the victims of suppression and oppression by the government of Israel. Those who relentlessly beat the drums of war against Iran and will do everything in their power to make it happen.
This dark force is a menace to this nation and our democracy; it has the potential power to destroy this nation from within if its twisted ideology is allowed to run rampant and unchecked. If it succeeds in gaining full control over this government then America will become a living hell. It is a force that poses an extreme, imminent danger to the future of America; it is a force that we must combat and take down.

Michael Payne is an independent progressive activist. His articles concentrate on social, economic and political matters as well as American foreign policy. He is a U.S. Army veteran and a graduate of Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. His (more...)
 

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author
and do not necessarily reflect those of this website or its editors.

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WORLD

TomDispatch.com / By Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky: The Decline of American Empire (Part 2)

The principles of imperial domination have undergone little change, but the capacity to implement them has markedly declined.

February 15, 2012 |

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com here. The following article is part 2 of Noam Chomsky's series on American decline at home and abroad. Part 1 is here.

In the years of conscious, self-inflicted decline at home, “losses” continued to mount elsewhere. In the past decade, for the first time in 500 years, South America has taken successful steps to free itself from western domination, another serious loss. The region has moved towards integration, and has begun to address some of the terrible internal problems of societies ruled by mostly Europeanized elites, tiny islands of extreme wealth in a sea of misery. They have also rid themselves of all U.S. military bases and of IMF controls. A newly formed organization, CELAC, includes all countries of the hemisphere apart from the U.S. and Canada. If it actually functions, that would be another step in American decline, in this case in what has always been regarded as “the backyard.”

Even more serious would be the loss of the MENA countries -- Middle East/North Africa -- which have been regarded by planners since the 1940s as “a stupendous source of strategic power, and one of the greatest material prizes in world history.” Control of MENA energy reserves would yield “substantial control of the world,” in the words of the influential Roosevelt advisor A.A. Berle.

To be sure, if the projections of a century of U.S. energy independence based on North American energy resources turn out to be realistic, the significance of controlling MENA would decline somewhat, though probably not by much: the main concern has always been control more than access. However, the likely consequences to the planet’s equilibrium are so ominous that discussion may be largely an academic exercise.

The Arab Spring, another development of historic importance, might portend at least a partial “loss” of MENA. The US and its allies have tried hard to prevent that outcome -- so far, with considerable success. Their policy towards the popular uprisings has kept closely to the standard guidelines: support the forces most amenable to U.S. influence and control.

Favored dictators are supported as long as they can maintain control (as in the major oil states). When that is no longer possible, then discard them and try to restore the old regime as fully as possible (as in Tunisia and Egypt). The general pattern is familiar: Somoza, Marcos, Duvalier, Mobutu, Suharto, and many others. In one case, Libya, the three traditional imperial powers intervened by force to participate in a rebellion to overthrow a mercurial and unreliable dictator, opening the way, it is expected, to more efficient control over Libya’s rich resources (oil primarily, but also water, of particular interest to French corporations), to a possible base for the U.S. Africa Command (so far restricted to Germany), and to the reversal of growing Chinese penetration. As far as policy goes, there have been few surprises.

Crucially, it is important to reduce the threat of functioning democracy, in which popular opinion will significantly influence policy. That again is routine, and quite understandable. A look at the studies of public opinion undertaken by U.S. polling agencies in the MENA countries easily explains the western fear of authentic democracy, in which public opinion will significantly influence policy.

Israel and the Republican Party

Similar considerations carry over directly to the second major concern addressed in the issue of Foreign Affairs cited in part one of this piece: the Israel-Palestine conflict. Fear of democracy could hardly be more clearly exhibited than in this case. In January 2006, an election took place in Palestine, pronounced free and fair by international monitors. The instant reaction of the U.S. (and of course Israel), with Europe following along politely, was to impose harsh penalties on Palestinians for voting the wrong way.

That is no innovation. It is quite in accord with the general and unsurprising principle recognized by mainstream scholarship: the U.S. supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives, the rueful conclusion of neo-Reaganite Thomas Carothers, the most careful and respected scholarly analyst of “democracy promotion” initiatives.

More broadly, for 35 years the U.S. has led the rejectionist camp on Israel-Palestine, blocking an international consensus calling for a political settlement in terms too well known to require repetition. The western mantra is that Israel seeks negotiations without preconditions, while the Palestinians refuse. The opposite is more accurate. The U.S. and Israel demand strict preconditions, which are, furthermore, designed to ensure that negotiations will lead either to Palestinian capitulation on crucial issues, or nowhere.

The first precondition is that the negotiations must be supervised by Washington, which makes about as much sense as demanding that Iran supervise the negotiation of Sunni-Shia conflicts in Iraq. Serious negotiations would have to be under the auspices of some neutral party, preferably one that commands some international respect, perhaps Brazil. The negotiations would seek to resolve the conflicts between the two antagonists: the U.S.-Israel on one side, most of the world on the other.

The second precondition is that Israel must be free to expand its illegal settlements in the West Bank. Theoretically, the U.S. opposes these actions, but with a very light tap on the wrist, while continuing to provide economic, diplomatic, and military support. When the U.S. does have some limited objections, it very easily bars the actions, as in the case of the E-1 project linking Greater Jerusalem to the town of Ma’aleh Adumim, virtually bisecting the West Bank, a very high priority for Israeli planners (across the spectrum), but raising some objections in Washington, so that Israel has had to resort to devious measures to chip away at the project.

The pretense of opposition reached the level of farce last February when Obama vetoed a Security Council resolution calling for implementation of official U.S. policy (also adding the uncontroversial observation that the settlements themselves are illegal, quite apart from expansion). Since that time there has been little talk about ending settlement expansion, which continues, with studied provocation.

Thus, as Israeli and Palestinian representatives prepared to meet in Jordan in January 2011, Israel announced new construction in Pisgat Ze’ev and Har Homa, West Bank areas that it has declared to be within the greatly expanded area of Jerusalem, annexed, settled, and constructed as Israel’s capital, all in violation of direct Security Council orders. Other moves carry forward the grander design of separating whatever West Bank enclaves will be left to Palestinian administration from the cultural, commercial, political center of Palestinian life in the former Jerusalem.

It is understandable that Palestinian rights should be marginalized in U.S. policy and discourse. Palestinians have no wealth or power. They offer virtually nothing to U.S. policy concerns; in fact, they have negative value, as a nuisance that stirs up “the Arab street.”

Israel, in contrast, is a valuable ally. It is a rich society with a sophisticated, largely militarized high-tech industry. For decades, it has been a highly valued military and strategic ally, particularly since 1967, when it performed a great service to the U.S. and its Saudi ally by destroying the Nasserite “virus,” establishing the “special relationship” with Washington in the form that has persisted since. It is also a growing center for U.S. high-tech investment. In fact, high tech and particularly military industries in the two countries are closely linked.

Apart from such elementary considerations of great power politics as these, there are cultural factors that should not be ignored. Christian Zionism in Britain and the U.S. long preceded Jewish Zionism, and has been a significant elite phenomenon with clear policy implications (including the Balfour Declaration, which drew from it). When General Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.

The next step was for the Chosen People to return to the land promised to them by the Lord. Articulating a common elite view, President Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes described Jewish colonization of Palestine as an achievement “without comparison in the history of the human race.” Such attitudes find their place easily within the Providentialist doctrines that have been a strong element in popular and elite culture since the country’s origins: the belief that God has a plan for the world and the U.S. is carrying it forward under divine guidance, as articulated by a long list of leading figures.

Moreover, evangelical Christianity is a major popular force in the U.S. Further toward the extremes, End Times evangelical Christianity also has enormous popular outreach, invigorated by the establishment of Israel in 1948, revitalized even more by the conquest of the rest of Palestine in 1967 -- all signs that End Times and the Second Coming are approaching.

These forces have become particularly significant since the Reagan years, as the Republicans have abandoned the pretense of being a political party in the traditional sense, while devoting themselves in virtual lockstep uniformity to servicing a tiny percentage of the super-rich and the corporate sector. However, the small constituency that is primarily served by the reconstructed party cannot provide votes, so they have to turn elsewhere.

The only choice is to mobilize tendencies that have always been present, though rarely as an organized political force: primarily nativists trembling in fear and hatred, and religious elements that are extremists by international standards but not in the U.S. One outcome is reverence for alleged Biblical prophecies, hence not only support for Israel and its conquests and expansion, but passionate love for Israel, another core part of the catechism that must be intoned by Republican candidates -- with Democrats, again, not too far behind.

These factors aside, it should not be forgotten that the “Anglosphere” -- Britain and its offshoots -- consists of settler-colonial societies, which rose on the ashes of indigenous populations, suppressed or virtually exterminated. Past practices must have been basically correct, in the U.S. case even ordained by Divine Providence. Accordingly there is often an intuitive sympathy for the children of Israel when they follow a similar course. But primarily, geostrategic and economic interests prevail, and policy is not graven in stone.

The Iranian “Threat” and the Nuclear Issue

Let us turn finally to the third of the leading issues addressed in the establishment journals cited earlier, the “threat of Iran.” Among elites and the political class this is generally taken to be the primary threat to world order -- though not among populations. In Europe, polls show that Israel is regarded as the leading threat to peace. In the MENA countries, that status is shared with the U.S., to the extent that in Egypt, on the eve of the Tahrir Square uprising, 80% felt that the region would be more secure if Iran had nuclear weapons. The same polls found that only 10% regard Iran as a threat -- unlike the ruling dictators, who have their own concerns.

In the United States, before the massive propaganda campaigns of the past few years, a majority of the population agreed with most of the world that, as a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has a right to carry out uranium enrichment. And even today, a large majority favors peaceful means for dealing with Iran. There is even strong opposition to military engagement if Iran and Israel are at war. Only a quarter regard Iran as an important concern for the U.S. altogether. But it is not unusual for there to be a gap, often a chasm, dividing public opinion and policy.

Why exactly is Iran regarded as such a colossal threat? The question is rarely discussed, but it is not hard to find a serious answer -- though not, as usual, in the fevered pronouncements. The most authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and the intelligence services in their regular reports to Congress on global security. They report that Iran does not pose a military threat. Its military spending is very low even by the standards of the region, minuscule of course in comparison with the U.S.

Iran has little capacity to deploy force. Its strategic doctrines are defensive, designed to deter invasion long enough for diplomacy to set it. If Iran is developing nuclear weapons capability, they report, that would be part of its deterrence strategy. No serious analyst believes that the ruling clerics are eager to see their country and possessions vaporized, the immediate consequence of their coming even close to initiating a nuclear war. And it is hardly necessary to spell out the reasons why any Iranian leadership would be concerned with deterrence, under existing circumstances.

The regime is doubtless a serious threat to much of its own population -- and regrettably, is hardly unique on that score. But the primary threat to the U.S. and Israel is that Iran might deter their free exercise of violence. A further threat is that the Iranians clearly seek to extend their influence to neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, and beyond as well. Those “illegitimate” acts are called “destabilizing” (or worse). In contrast, forceful imposition of U.S. influence halfway around the world contributes to “stability” and order, in accord with traditional doctrine about who owns the world.

It makes very good sense to try to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear weapons states, including the three that have refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty -- Israel, India, and Pakistan, all of which have been assisted in developing nuclear weapons by the U.S., and are still being assisted by them. It is not impossible to approach that goal by peaceful diplomatic means. One approach, which enjoys overwhelming international support, is to undertake meaningful steps towards establishing a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East, including Iran and Israel (and applying as well to U.S. forces deployed there), better still extending to South Asia.

Support for such efforts is so strong that the Obama administration has been compelled to formally agree, but with reservations: crucially, that Israel’s nuclear program must not be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Association, and that no state (meaning the U.S.) should be required to release information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel.” Obama also accepts Israel’s position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the U.S. and Israel can continue to delay indefinitely.

This survey comes nowhere near being exhaustive, needless to say. Among major topics not addressed is the shift of U.S. military policy towards the Asia-Pacific region, with new additions to the huge military base system underway right now, in Jeju Island off South Korea and Northwest Australia, all elements of the policy of “containment of China.” Closely related is the issue of U.S. bases in Okinawa, bitterly opposed by the population for many years, and a continual crisis in U.S.-Tokyo-Okinawa relations.

Revealing how little fundamental assumptions have changed, U.S. strategic analysts describe the result of China’s military programs as a “classic 'security dilemma,' whereby military programs and national strategies deemed defensive by their planners are viewed as threatening by the other side,” writes Paul Godwin of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The security dilemma arises over control of the seas off China’s coasts. The U.S. regards its policies of controlling these waters as “defensive,” while China regards them as threatening; correspondingly, China regards its actions in nearby areas as “defensive” while the U.S. regards them as threatening. No such debate is even imaginable concerning U.S. coastal waters. This “classic security dilemma” makes sense, again, on the assumption that the U.S. has a right to control most of the world, and that U.S. security requires something approaching absolute global control.

While the principles of imperial domination have undergone little change, the capacity to implement them has markedly declined as power has become more broadly distributed in a diversifying world. Consequences are many. It is, however, very important to bear in mind that -- unfortunately -- none lifts the two dark clouds that hover over all consideration of global order: nuclear war and environmental catastrophe, both literally threatening the decent survival of the species.

Quite the contrary. Both threats are ominous, and increasing.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and the author of The American Way of War: How Bush’s Wars Became Obama’s as well as The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. His latest book, The United States of Fear (Haymarket Books), has just been published in November.

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