Party Down: The 2012 Politics of Fantasy and Terror

Party Down: The 2012 Politics of Fantasy

by Ben Schreiner / August 23rd, 2012

Those who succeed in politics, as in most of the culture, are those who create the most convincing fantasies.
— Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

With both tickets now set, the democratic farce that is the U.S. presidential election lumbers into its final act. And for a campaign already rife with all the petty trivialities and celebrity intrigues more suiting of a reality TV show, it is no surprise that both political parties intend on using their upcoming political conventions to furnish choreographed spectacles designed for little more than prime time viewing.

According to the New York Times, a “$2.5 million Frank Lloyd Wright inspired theatrical stage,” complete with 13 different video screens, will welcome the television viewer of the Republican national convention in Tampa. All part of an effort, the Times notes, to cloak that cold, vulture capitalist Romney in a veil of “warmth, approachability and openness.” As a senior Romney advisor boasted to the paper, “Even the [wooden video screen] frames are designed to give it a sense that you’re not looking at a stage, you’re looking into someone’s living room.” (Presumably a direct mock-up of one Romney’s living rooms.)

Protecting Mitt’s newly crafted aura of “approachability and openness” from the potential wayward vagabond, the city of Tampa will spend $24.85 million alone on law enforcement personnel during the four day convention. This will include a massive deployment of 3,500-4,000 “contingency officers” from up to 63 outside police departments. Hospitality clearly has its limits.
It is all much the same for the Democratic convention set for early September in Charlotte. The award-winning Brand Obama is also much too valuable to be tarnished by the taint of social unrest.

The looming crackdown on dissent Charlotte-style, though, will be eased by nothing short of an Orwellian city law allowing any large public gathering to be declared “an extraordinary event.” Arbitrary search and arrest of any individual the police fancy will then be ipso facto legal. (Like such police practices are in any way “extraordinary.”)

Of course, all those hapless souls set to be greeted with the swing of the police truncheon in the streets of Tampa and Charlotte will garner nary a mention from the herd of corporate media planning to embed safely within the bunkered convention halls. Instead, the legions of dimwitted media pundits and talking heads will busy themselves filling air time as they wax-poetic on the true splendor of American democracy manifested in the sheets of convention confetti raining from the rafters.

The media’s neat packaging of the entire spectacle as all part of the must-see docudrama titled “Decision 2012” will undoubtedly do little to hide the true nature of the charade from the perceptive observer. Nonetheless, the politics as entertainment orgy will precede forth, with the media present to celebrate and partake in it all. Which can only give added credence to the Neil Postman quip that, “In America, the least amusing people are its professional entertainers.”
The fundamental matter of whether there is truly decision at all to be made in 2012, needless to say, is rather dubious.

As the New York Times writes of the international outlooks of Obama and Romney: “The actual foreign policy differences between the two seem more a matter of degree and tone than the articulation of a profound debate about the course of America in the world.” Put differently, threats to bomb Iran, “contain” China, and bow to Israel are simply beyond debate.

Indeed, even leftist supporters of Obama admit there is no discernible difference between the two candidates. As Obama backers Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson instead argue, “November 2012 becomes not a statement about the Obama presidency, but a defensive move by progressive forces to hold back the ‘Caligulas’ on the political right.” Such bankrupt arguments inevitably rear their ugly head every four years in the now tired attempt to send the fractured American Left scurrying straight into death vise of the “Party of the people.”
Given this altogether pitiful state of affairs, the presidential campaign necessarily must devolve into little more than a national marketing campaign—replete with the assorted gimmicks, tricks, and deceptions inherent to that vile craft deemed “public relations.” Thus, the “decision” to be made in 2012 is limited to that between Brand Obama and Brand Romney. No different in approach, really, than choosing between Pepsi and Coke—Nike and Adidas. For just as with all branding, the 2012 decision is not about deciphering between two differing products or candidates—as they both promise to deliver the same agenda of neoliberalism at home, imperialism abroad—but rather choosing between two sets of experiential promises (fictitious as they are). In terms of 2012, it’s the dim hope and vague slogan of “Forward” proffered from camp Obama, versus team Romney’s promise of comfort to be found in a restoration of America power.

In other words then, the man best able to peddle the most convincing fantasy to the American consumer this fall shall be the one to ultimately prevail in November.

All befitting of an empire of illusion.

Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer living in Salem, Oregon. He may be reached at: bnschreiner@gmail.com. Read other articles by Ben.

This article was posted on Thursday, August 23rd, 2012 at 8:01am and is filed under Democrats, Elections, Obama, Right Wing Jerks.

From Advanced Degree to Welfare

From Advanced Degree to Welfare

Due to cuts in higher education, and a lack of jobs in academia, people with advanced degrees increasingly depend on federal food stamps.

By Stacey Patton, from “The Chronicle of Higher Education”
July/August 2012 

 

 

 

“I am not a welfare queen,” says Melissa Bruninga-Matteau.

Is There Life After Welfare?

Desperately seeking a new story on $5.50 an hour...

That’s how she feels compelled to start a conversation about how she, a white woman with a PhD in medieval history and an adjunct professor, came to rely on federal food stamps and Medicaid. Ms. Bruninga-Matteau, a 43-year-old single mother who teaches two humanities courses at Yavapai College, in Prescott, Arizona, says the stereotype of the people receiving such aid does not reflect reality. Recipients include growing numbers of people like her, the highly educated, whose advanced degrees have not insulated them from financial hardship.

“I find it horrifying that someone who stands in front of college classes and teaches is on welfare,” she says.

A Shrinking Tenure Track

Ms. Bruninga-Matteau grew up in an upper-middle class family that saw educational achievement as the pathway to a successful career and a prosperous life. She entered graduate school in 2002, idealistic about landing a tenure-track job. She never imagined that she’d end up trying to eke out a living, teaching college for poverty wages, with no benefits or job security.

Ms. Bruninga-Matteau always wanted to teach. This semester she is working 20 hours each week, prepping, teaching, advising, and grading papers for two courses at Yavapai. Her take-home pay is $900 a month, of which $750 goes to rent. Each week, she spends $40 on gas to get her to the campus; she lives 43 miles away, where housing is cheaper.

Last year, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed a budget that cut the state’s allocation to Yavapai’s operating budget from $4.3 million to $900,000. The cut led to an 18,000-hour reduction in the use of part-time faculty like Ms. Bruninga-Matteau.

“The media gives us this image that people who are on public assistance are dropouts, on drugs or alcohol, and are irresponsible,” she says. “I’m not irresponsible. I’m highly educated. I’ve never made a lot of money, but I’ve been able to make enough to live on. Until now.”

Ms. Bruninga-Matteau is part of an often overlooked, and growing, subgroup of PhD recipients, adjunct professors, and other Americans with advanced degrees who have had to apply for food stamps or some other form of government aid since late 2007. Some are struggling to pay back student loans and cover basic living expenses as they submit scores of applications for a limited pool of full-time academic positions. Others are trying to raise families or pay for their children’s college expenses on the low and fluctuating pay they receive as professors off the tenure track, a group that now makes up 70 percent of faculties. Many bounce on and off unemployment or welfare during semester breaks. And some adjuncts have found themselves trying to make ends meet by waiting tables or bagging groceries alongside their students.

The percentage of graduate-degree holders who receive federal food stamps or some other aid more than doubled between 2007 and 2010, but shame has helped to keep the problem hidden. “People don’t want their faces and names associated with this experience,” says Karen Kelsey, a former tenured professor who now runs The Professor Is In, an academic-career consulting business.

Some adjuncts make less money than custodians and campus support staff who may not have college degrees. An adjunct’s salary can range from $600 to $10,000 per course. The national average earnings of adjunct instructors are just under $2,500 per course.

Elliott Stegall, a white, 51-year-old married father of two, teaches two courses each semester in the English department at Northwest Florida State College, in Niceville, Florida. He and his wife, Amanda, live in a modest home about 40 miles away in DeFuniak Springs.

Mr. Stegall is a graduate student at Florida State University, where he is finishing his dissertation in film studies. At night, after his 3-year-old and 3-month-old children have been put to bed, he grades a stack of composition papers or plugs away at his dissertation. They receive food stamps, Medicaid, and aid from the Women, Infants, and Children program (known as WIC).

Mr. Stegall has taught at three colleges for more than 14 years. When he and Ms. Stegall stepped inside the local WIC office in Tallahassee, where they used to live, with their children in tow, he had to fight shame, a sense of failure, and the notion that he was not supposed to be there. After all, he grew up in a family that valued hard work and knowledge. His father was a pastor and a humanities professor, and his mother was psychology professor.

“The first time we went to the office to apply, I felt like I had arrived from Eastern Europe to Ellis Island,” he says. “The place was filled with people from every culture and ethnicity. We all had that same ragged, poor look in our eyes.”

Mr. Stegall has supplemented his teaching income by working odd jobs. He painted houses until the housing crisis eliminated clients. He and his wife worked as servers for a catering company until the economic downturn hurt business. And they cleaned condos along Destin beach. They took the children along because day care was too expensive.

“I’m grateful for government assistance. Without it, my family and I would certainly be homeless and destitute,” he says. “But living on the dole is excruciatingly embarrassing and a constant reminder that I must have done something terribly wrong along the way to deserve this fate.”

 

“It’s the dirty little secret of higher education,” says Matthew Williams, cofounder of the New Faculty Majority, an advocacy group for nontenure-track faculty. “Many administrators are not aware of the whole extent of the problem. But all it takes is for somebody to run the numbers to see that their faculty is eligible for welfare assistance.” Public colleges have a special obligation to ensure that the conditions under which contingent faculty work are not exploitative, he says.

Michael Bérubé, president of the Modern Language Association, says that he and his wife, Janet, qualified for WIC while they were in graduate school in the late 1980s.

“Everyone thinks a PhD pretty much guarantees you a living wage and, from what I can tell, most commentators think that college professors make $100,000 and more,” he says. “But I’ve been hearing all year from nontenure-track faculty making under $20,000, and I don’t know anyone who believes you can raise a family on that. Even living as a single person on that salary is tough, if you want to eat something other than ramen noodles every once in a while.”

Ms. Kelsey, who helps graduate students and adjuncts who are homeless or on aid, says the false portrayal of aid recipients as “welfare queens” is an illusion that was created for political purposes.

“Racializing food stamps denies that wide swaths of the population, reaching into the middle classes, are dealing with food insecurity,” she says. Thirty-nine percent of all welfare recipients are white, 37 percent are black, 17 percent are Hispanic, and 3 percent are Asian. 

But race and cultural stereotypes play a significant part in how many academics are struggling with the reality of being on welfare. Kisha Hawkins-Sledge, who is 35 and a black single mother of 3-year-old twin boys, earned her master’s degree in English last August. She began teaching part-time while in graduate school, and says she made enough money to live on until she had children. She lives in Lansing, Illinois.

“My household went from one to three. My income was not enough, and so I had to apply for assistance,” she says. She now receives federal food stamps, WIC, Medicaid, and child-care assistance.

Like Ms. Bruninga-Matteau and Mr. Stegall, Ms. Hawkins-Sledge says she had preconceived notions about people on government assistance before she herself began receiving aid. “I thought that welfare was for people who didn’t go to school and couldn’t get a good job,” she says. Ms. Hawkins-Sledge says she grew up watching her mother work hard and put herself through college and graduate school. “My mom defied the stereotype and here I am in graduate school trying to do the same.”

“I had to work against my color, my flesh, and my name alone,” she says. “I went to school to get all these degrees to prove to the rest of the world that I’m not lazy and I’m not on welfare. But there I was and I asked myself, ‘What’s the point? I’m here anyway.’”

For Ms. Hawkins-Sledge, there is good news. She will begin a full-time, tenure-track job as an English professor at Prairie State College in August.

Stacey Patton is a staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education. Excerpted from The Chronicle of Higher Education (May 6, 2012), the No. 1 source of news, information, and jobs for college and university faculty members and administrators.
 

SALON

Saturday, Aug 4, 2012 03:30 PM EDT

“Total Recall” and America’s false-memory syndrome

Do we know who we really are? The 2012 election is a Philip K. Dick showdown between dueling American fantasies

By Andrew O'Hehir

Topics: 2012 Elections, Barack Obama, Editor's Picks, Mitt Romney, Movies, Politics, total recall, U.S. Politics

 
Colin Farrell in "Total Recall"


Every variety of nationalism, in every country in the world, involves some degree of invention, imagination and amnesia, standing in for actual history. Most scholars of Balkan history will tell you that the supposedly ancient enmity between Serbs, Croats and Muslims that led to the terrible civil war of the 1990s – the first serious outbreak of genocidal violence in Europe since the Holocaust – was a modern invention, deliberately inflamed by political leaders. Along with the even worse conflict in Rwanda between the Hutu and Tutsi, two groups indistinguishable to outsiders, this offered a gruesome example of what historian Benedict Anderson has called “imagined community,” the shared sense of a tribal or national identity that runs deep and links unconnected strangers together, even if it was actually concocted the day before yesterday.

So Americans are not unique when it comes to our ambivalent or hostile relationship to history, our preference for simplistic myth-making over the unsettled and perennially conflicted character of the past. Given our nation’s short and bloody history – and the fact that there’s so much of it we’d rather not think about – it’s possible that we suffer from an exaggerated version of this syndrome. Whether or not that’s true, in this historical moment we face an especially stark choice between different versions of the American imagined community, which is what I believe accounts for the poisonous character of this presidential campaign.

Whatever about the actual differences between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney – which I would argue are minor, in the bigger picture – their supporters see them as embodying different visions of the nation, both of which are notional or imaginary. One of them promises a renewal of the past, although it’s a past that never existed in the first place and one he certainly cannot recreate. The other seems to represent a more inclusive and optimistic future, or at least he used to. Given prevailing cultural and economic realities it’s a future well beyond his capacity (or anybody else’s) to will into existence.

This week’s new Hollywood remake of the science-fiction classic “Total Recall” is more concerned with Colin Farrell’s muscular frame and its exaggerated stunts and effects than with political allegory. But like the Arnold Schwarzenegger original from 1990, it draws its source material from Philip K. Dick’s famous science-fiction story “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” which can absolutely be read as a loaded commentary on our understanding of history, or lack thereof. Farrell plays a factory worker who builds robot soldiers in a ruined, totalitarian future society, until he is thrust into an endless loop of epistemological doubt, where he can’t be sure who he really is or what he really knows about himself or the world. He may be a highly trained secret agent, or he may have an implanted false memory to that effect. Furthermore, if he is an undercover ninja assassin, he doesn’t know whether he works for the nefarious one-world government or the underground resistance.

America as a whole finds itself in a similar position, uncertain about the basic facts of its own history, let alone what lessons to draw from them and whether or not it’s truly on the side of the angels. That goes double, I think, for America’s declining white majority, which simultaneously feels itself embattled and undermined even as it still holds a grotesquely disproportionate share of power, money and privilege. This is among the principal themes of my Salon colleague Joan Walsh’s upcoming book “What’s the Matter With White People?”, which is certain to provoke much discussion as the campaign season heats up.

To paraphrase her argument into my own terms (which she may not entirely agree with), Walsh sees the contemporary Tea Party-aligned right wing as the latest manifestation of an enduring ideological current in American politics that appeals to a harmonious, godly and racially coded vision of the past. In our day, that means the past before the Civil Rights movement and feminism and gay marriage and all the social tumult of the 1960s that led inexorably, last but not least, to the election of a president who may or may not be Kenyan or Muslim but is certainly not one of us. Walsh further argues that there’s more going on here than simple racism, and she’s right. Most importantly, the idea that there was some period of universally prosperous and harmonious white hegemony in America’s past is a ludicrous fiction, employed to enable an especially pernicious imagined community. The real history of European immigration to North America is full of discord, bigotry and violence, with bitter nativist prejudice unleashed, in turn, against the Irish, the Italians, the Poles, the Jews and anyone else who came along.

Those groups were eventually able to acculturate as “white” in ways that African-Americans and most dark-skinned immigrants could not, but at the ultimate cost of having their cultural memories reformatted, “Total Recall”-style, or subscribing to Henry Ford’s famous proclamation that history is bunk. Again, I’m not suggesting that the allure of a mythological past is unique to Americans, or white people, or the Tea Party. But there’s no denying that the modern Republican Party has been extraordinarily successful at convincing the white working class to vote loyally and even enthusiastically against its own economic interests by offering a seductive vision of American identity that is based on a past that never was and that excludes vast swaths of the bicoastal urban and suburban population from full membership.

At times the left has also been guilty of its own historical mythology, a crypto-Christian vision of American exceptionalism turned upside down, in which the U.S. is a profoundly evil nation poisoned by the original sins of slavery and the Indian genocide. (This is roughly how the Martians view Earth in C.S. Lewis’ religious allegory “Out of the Silent Planet.”) That certainly isn’t what the Obama-era Democratic Party stands for (if it stands for anything identifiable at all), as much as Republicans love to harp on anomalous figures like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It’s difficult for any American to view the Obama-Romney contest from an objective distance, but when I try to do so, I come up against the fact that these are two men from slightly different sectors of the elite caste, who will pursue similar policies on a wide range of issues and have almost identical relationships with corporate capital, the true power center in our so-called republic.

No one should doubt that there are meaningful differences between Obama and Romney when it comes to healthcare policy, likely Supreme Court appointments, reproductive rights, gay marriage and a handful of other things – and then there’s the telling personal detail that Obama rose from the middle-class intelligentsia, while Romney was born into wealth and privilege. (Their foreign-policy differences seem largely a question of how loudly they plan to cheer while Israel nukes Iran.) Those don’t seem sufficient to explain the extreme level of invective on both sides, especially not the right’s depiction of Obama as a dangerous, tax-happy socialist with some concealed Hugo Chávez-style agenda ready for the second term. (Maybe he’s really a Red secret agent who just doesn’t know it yet, like Farrell’s character.)

I was raised by California liberals and now live in New York City, so of course I’m more attuned to the imagined community that Obama, however vaguely, seems to represent. If you’re reading this, you get it: A multiracial, multicultural future in which the universal prosperity and liberty imagined by our country’s screwed-up and contentious Founding Fathers finally extends to everyone. If that sounds more like the society depicted in a Verizon commercial than a realistic possibility based on our country’s actual history and its current state of economic decline, cultural division and political paralysis, well, you grasp the problem.


Sure, it’s a nice picture. But the imaginary version of small-town America circa 1953 that Mitt Romney stands for (also with a high degree of fuzziness) paints a nice picture too, in a different way. Neither of them has anything to do with what these guys will actually do as president – not much, as usual – let alone with the more urgent questions which Philip K. Dick and Henry Ford were actually addressing,each in his own way: where we actually are, how we got here, and how in hell we can get out.

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You are here: Home / We Say This / Republican hypocrisy: Guilt by association only applies to Dems

Republican hypocrisy: Guilt by association only applies to Dems

June 7, 2012 by Julie Driscoll 1 Comment

Gotta love all the practical applications of IOIYAR (It’s Okay If You’re A Republican).

Okay, start here.  Here ya have Mitt Romney, the now-official GOP presidential candidate, pal-ing around with terrorists fund raiser and self-described political powerhouse, Donald Trump, the yin to his yang, and a guy who’s elevated himself to just one very tiny step below the lunacy that is Dr. Orly Taitz, Esq. (attorney/dentist/real estate agent) and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And yet Romney not only doesn’t denounce his  golden-egg-laying goose, Trump, but he’s pretty much ignored the whole birther debacle. Sure, okay, maybe Romney has expressed a view that President Obama is a U.S. citizen (big of him), but he hasn’t denounced his birther bro, and continues to share the stage with Trump at fund-raising events, complete with guffaws and back slaps  In right-wing-land, apparently, there’s no taint for Romney of guilt by association.

My, how things have changed.



Let’s take a trip down the “guilt by association” memory lane as applied to President Obama, shall we?

President Obama, guilty (by association) of rubbing elbows with Bill Ayers, a 60′s domestic terrorist, now a university professor and a guy President Obama had a passing relationship with in Chicago. Fox News hosts probably dream about the guy, they spent so much time with him in their heads.

President Obama, guilty (by association) of worshiping with his family at the church of Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a Chicago minister who condemned American practices in a thundering sermon:  ”The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people . . . God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”  For those words, spoken by his long-time pastor, President Obama was condemned as anti-American (and, when added to the Bill Ayers association, an anti-American terrorist lover).

President Obama, guilty (by association) of allowing green jobs czar Van Jones to join the Administration.  When it was learned that Jones had loose links to the “truther” movement, had called Republicans names in a speech, had had a youthful infatuation with the Marxist movement and had advocated on behalf of an imprisoned cop-killer, Jones resigned from the Obama Administration. But that didn’t stop the gleeful Fox Newsies from tainting the President with the “guilty by association!” brush – which, coupled with the Ayers and Wright guilt, turned the President into an anti-American, terrorist-loving, committed communist revolutionary in the eyes of righty.

Ah, let’s remember Anita Dunn, the White House communications director who not only took on Fox News directly (accusing them openly of being a communications arm of the Republican Party), but made a passing reference to Mao in a speech – and boom, bam, President Obama was suddenly guilty (by association) of having Maoist ties.

President Obama:  An anti-American, terrorist-loving, committed communist revolutionary Maoist.

Kevin Jennings, a gay man and the Obama Administration’s Safe Schools Czar, was the target of a smear campaign alleging that he was a pedophile. He battled it back, and the Obama Administration stood behind him, but that didn’t prevent right-wing pundits and bloggers and crazy people from promoting the “look what whackjob Obama appointed now” meme. President Obama, guilty (by association) of, um, being homosexual?  Oh, and shielding a pedophile.

More recently, an old videotape was dredged up of President Obama hugging now deceased Harvard Professor Derrick Bell, one of the originators of the Critical Race Theory (which, for Fox and right-wingers, was evidence that Bell was a wild-eyed radical, and President Obama along with him).

And in Chicago, President Obama was connected to the scandal involving Tony Rezko, the attempted sale of his own Senate seat by Governor Rod Blagojevich, Jesse Jackson Jr. (somehow) and, for all I know, the 60′s mass murderer Richard Speck.

President Obama: 0; guilt by association:  8.

Learn it.  Know it.  Live it.  IOKIYAR.

Extremism Normalized: How Americans Now Acquiesce to Once Unthinkable Ideas

Published on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 by Salon.com

Extremism Normalized: How Americans Now Acquiesce to Once Unthinkable Ideas

by Glenn Greenwald

 

Remember when, in the wake of the 9/11 attack, the Patriot Act was controversial, held up as the symbolic face of Bush/Cheney radicalism and widely lamented as a threat to core American liberties and restraints on federal surveillance and detention powers? Yet now, the Patriot Act is quietly renewed every four years by overwhelming majorities in both parties (despite substantial evidence of serious abuse), and almost nobody is bothered by it any longer. That’s how extremist powers become normalized: they just become such a fixture in our political culture that we are trained to take them for granted, to view the warped as normal. Here are several examples from the last couple of days illustrating that same dynamic; none seems overwhelmingly significant on its own, but that’s the point:

After Dick Cheney criticized John McCain this weekend for having chosen Sarah Palin as his running mate, this was McCain’s retort:

Look, I respect the vice president. He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not. I don’t think we should have.

Isn’t it amazing that the first sentence there (“I respect the vice president”) can precede the next one (“He and I had strong disagreements as to whether we should torture people or not”) without any notice or controversy? I realize insincere expressions of respect are rote ritualism among American political elites, but still, McCain’s statement amounts to this pronouncement: Dick Cheney authorized torture — he is a torturer — and I respect him. How can that be an acceptable sentiment to express? Of course, it’s even more notable that political officials whom everyone knows authorized torture are walking around free, respected and prosperous, completely shielded from all criminal accountability. “Torture” has been permanently transformed from an unspeakable taboo into a garden-variety political controversy, where it shall long remain.

Equally remarkable is this Op-Ed from The Los Angeles Times over the weekend, condemning President Obama’s kill lists and secret assassinations:

Allowing the president of the United States to act as judge, jury and executioner for suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, on the basis of secret evidence is impossible to reconcile with the Constitution’s guarantee that a life will not be taken without due process of law.

Under the law, the government must obtain a court order if it seeks to target a U.S. citizen for electronic surveillance, yet there is no comparable judicial review of a decision to kill a citizen. No court is even able to review the general policies for such assassinations. . . .
But if the United States is going to continue down the troubling road of state-sponsored assassination, Congress should, at the very least, require that a court play some role, as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court does with the electronic surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists. Even minimal judicial oversight might make the president and his advisors think twice about whether an American citizen poses such an “imminent” danger that he must be executed without a trial.

Isn’t it amazing that a newspaper editorial even has to say: you know, the President isn’t really supposed to have the power to act as judge, jury and executioner and order American citizens assassinated with no transparency or due process? And isn’t it even more amazing that the current President has actually seized and exercised this power with very little controversy? That presidential power — literally the most tyrannical power a political leader can seize — is also now a barely noticed fixture of our political culture.
Meanwhile, we have this, from the Associated Press yesterday:

Remember when John Poindexter’s “Total Information Awareness” program – which was “to use data mining technologies to sift through personal transactions in electronic data to find patterns and associations connected to terrorist threats and activities”: basically create real-time surveillance of everyone – was too extreme and menacing even for an America still at its peak of post-9/11 hysteria? Yet here we have the NYPD — more than a decade removed from 9/11 — announcing a very similar program in very similar terms, and it’s almost impossible to envision any real controversy.

Similarly, in the AP’s sentence above describing the supposed targets of this new NYPD surveillance program: what, exactly, is a “potential terrorist”? Isn’t that an incredibly Orwellian term given that, by definition, it can include anyone and everyone? In practice, it will almost certainly mean: all Muslims, plus anyone who engages in any activism that opposes prevailing power factions. That’s how the American Surveillance State is always used. Still, the undesirability of mass, “all-seeing,” indiscriminate surveillance regime was once viewed as undesirable — a view, in sum, that the East German Stasi was a bad idea that we would not want to replicate on American soil — yet now, there is almost no limit on the level of state surveillance we tolerate.

In The New York Times yesterday, Elisabeth Bumiller wrote about the very moving and burdensome plight of America’s drone pilots who, sitting in front of a “computer console [] in the Syracuse suburbs,” extinguish people’s lives thousands of miles away by launching missiles at them. The bulk of the article is devoted to eliciting sympathy and admiration for these noble warriors, but when doing so, she unwittingly describes America’s future with domestic surveillance drones:

Among the toughest psychological tasks is the close surveillance for aerial sniper missions, reminiscent of the East German Stasi officer absorbed by the people he spies on in the movie “The Lives of Others.” A drone pilot and his partner, a sensor operator who manipulates the aircraft’s camera, observe the habits of a militant as he plays with his children, talks to his wife and visits his neighbors. They then try to time their strike when, for example, his family is out at the market.
“They watch this guy do bad things and then his regular old life things,” said Col. Hernando Ortega, the chief of aerospace medicine for the Air Education Training Command, who helped conduct a study last year on the stresses on drone pilots. . . . ”You see them wake up in the morning, do their work, go to sleep at night,” said Dave, an Air Force major who flew drones from 2007 to 2009 at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada and now trains drone pilots at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

That’s the level of detailed monitoring that drone surveillance enables. Numerous attributes of surveillance drones — their ability to hover in the same place for long periods of time, their ability to remain stealth, their increasingly cheap cost and tiny size — enable surveillance of a breadth, duration and invasiveness unlike other types of surveillance instruments, such as police helicopters or satellites. Recall that one new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan — the Gorgon Stare, named after the “mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them” — is “able to scan an area the size of a small town” and “the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity”; boasted one U.S. General: “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”

There is zero question that this drone surveillance is coming to American soil. It already has spawned a vast industry that is quickly securing formal approval for the proliferation of these surveillance weapons. There’s some growing though still marginal opposition among both the independent left and the more libertarian-leaning precincts on the right, but at the moment, that trans-ideological coalition is easily outgunned by the combination of drone industry lobbyists and Surveillance State fanatics. The idea of flying robots hovering over American soil monitoring what citizens do en masse is yet another one of those ideas that, in the very recent past, seemed too radical and dystopian to entertain, yet is on the road to being quickly mainstreamed. When that happens, it is no longer deemed radical to advocate such things; radicalism is evinced by opposition to them.

Read the full article with updates at Salon.com

© 2012 Salon.com

Glenn Greenwald was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator in New York. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book "How Would a Patriot Act?," a critique of the Bush administration's use of executive power, released in May 2006. His second book, "A Tragic Legacy", examines the Bush legacy. His just-released book is titled "With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful." He is the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award for Independent Journalism.

How to Tell a Democrat from a Republican

Guest Editorial

How to Tell a Democrat from a Republican

by Leon Felkins

Conservative, n. - A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
  -- Ambrose Bierce

Many of you have expressed great confusion, in these troubled times, in trying to tell a Republican from a Democrat. Sure, we know what they say they are; most of them have well displayed nameplates. But could you tell one from the other in a blind test? That is, without prior knowledge and access to his/her nameplate, could you determine which was which simply by his/her actions? Probably not. The purpose of this essay is to assist you in making such an identification. In the following paragraphs, I will list the major issues of our times and clearly identify the differences between the Republican and Democrat approaches to these issues.

Abortion Democrats are generally for abortion. Unwanted pregnancy is -- like addiction to drugs or alcohol, tardiness, and procrastination -- an affliction and therefore needs to be treated by the government. Republicans are generally opposed to abortion unless of course it is one's own daughter that got knocked up, in which case the decent thing to do is to ship her off to some distant city where private but expensive medical care can be provided and the local community is spared the details. Animals Democrats believe that wild animals should have all the rights of humans, protected from any harm and allowed to die slow and agonizing deaths like most of the world's humans do. Republicans believe that wild animals were put here for the sport of hunting, provide a little expensive but gamy and tough meat, and an occasional fur coat for the missus.Both think that domestic animals and the raising thereof need massive government support. This often results in an excess of such animals, which are then killed, burnt or buried instead of being shipped off to starving humanity around the world because to do so might upset the local economy. Capital Punishment DemocratsBecause Democrats are genetically compassionate, they are opposed to capital punishment especially if it is someone who has tortured and molested 27 women and children to death as it is self evident that such a person has had a bad childhood, probably having his pacifier forcibly taken before he was nine years old. However, Democrats do make an exception to this opinion, if the victims were actually a close friend or part of the family. That family includes the family of government employees such as those that were blown up in Oklahoma City. In cases like that, the guy ought to be hung out in the sun by his testicles and left to die a slow death. RepublicansThe Republican's position on this issue is clear and is based upon the Judeo/Christian bible: an eye for an eye. That we are not always completely sure that we have the right dude before we send him on his way to St. Peter is not really all that serious of an issue. "God will sort it out" is their most commonly stated rationale for slaughtering a group of people that from their very looks it is obvious that they are guilty -- of something. Actually God really only gave us a hint as to the real possibilities: how about a lopped head for a mashed finger, for instance? That certainly should work even better. I understand that there are now over 50 offenses for which you can be given a quick dispatch to meet your maker. The Children! Democrats love children as a group but find individual children a pain in the butt. "We do it for the children" is an extremely effective slogan for the populace whether the particular program at issue is robbing the tobacco companies or grabbing more land in Colorado. The annoyance of individual children is easily appeased by hiring illegal aliens for house nannies. Republicans love individual children but find supporting the class of children as not part of God's plan (see Jeremiah 18:21: "So give their children over to famine; hand them over to the power of the sword.") Crime Democrats know that when someone commits a crime, it is society that has failed and should have to pay -- in the form of higher taxes and reduced freedom. Republicans believe that every person inherently knows right from wrong, whether they were raised by harlot on the mean streets of East St. Louis or by a wealthy Episcopal minister in the ritzy 'burbs of Germantown. They know that the solution to violent crime is to beat the hell out of the perpetrators. Drugs DemocratsDemocrats have no qualms about about recreational drugs. In fact they think the use of such drugs is cool. However, medicinal drugs are another matter. Since they think of the general populace as children, they want these drugs highly regulated. RepublicansRecreational drugs are absolutely verboten according to the Republicans. It is rumored that many folks actually have great fun with such drugs, therefore they are opposed, of course, as it is a basic principle of Conservatism that having too much fun is bad for the character. On the other hand, Republicans would allow you to prescribe and buy medicinal drugs without constraint as the drug industry is quite profitable. If you use the wrong drug or a bit too much, then the subsequent repairs to your body will again raise the national income just a bit. Republicans support the consumption of vast quantities of alcohol even though it kills more people by a factor of ten than all the "illegal" drugs combined. This makes sense because while it may get you high and out of control, technically it is not a "controlled substance". The Drug War Strangely, while Republicans oppose the use of recreational drugs and Democrats are much more tolerant, they both support, with great enthusiasm, the so-called War on Drugs (WOD). That is because the WOD has little to do with drugs but is big business with large profits and incentives as well as an expression of political agendas and control.Making a distinction between Republicans and Democrats with regard to the WOD is difficult for several reasons that are fundamental to what government is all about. I list a few: The WOD allowed that time-honored tradition of governments -- the seizure of private property -- to be re-instated (amazingly, with citizen approval!). History tells us that in ancient times, governments satisfied their desire for accumulating wealth by simple and honest plunder and property seizure. As governments got smarter, they organized the theft, provided a stable environment for its culture and labeled it "taxation" (See Mancur Olson's essay, "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development", American Political Science Review, Sept. 1993). I quote Olson (discussing the successful evolution of Chinese warlords): "The warlords had no claim to legitimacy and their thefts were distinguished from those of roving bandits only because they took the form of continuing taxation rather than occasional plunder." (In these modern times, the plunder sometimes has even more sophisticated titles such as "surcharge" as used by the recently imposed fee on anyone who has more than one telephone line.) The WOD allows the meddling in the affairs of small defenseless countries at will. The WOD provides another great opportunity to collect and spend great quantities of taxpayer's hard earned cash without any serious opposition. The reason for this is that the Drug problem is very close to being a natural disaster -- which governments love as they can spend freely without complaints. That said, there are small but helpful differences: DemocratsThe Democrats, as well as the Republicans, support the WOD, if for no other reason, because to do otherwise would result in the loss of votes. However, Democrats also support the concept as it allows the U.S. to act as the world policeman. Socialism is never going to work without one-world government. RepublicansThe Republicans love the WOD because it allows us to build up the military, throw a lot of people in jail that don't come around to the prescribed religious/moral values, and is very profitable. Education Democrats are for universal government provided education and to make it fair, all educational institutions must be equally bad. Of course that only applies to the general population -- politicians send their own children to private schools so that when they graduate they might actually be prepared to make a decent living and they will not be biased against the values of public education for the masses. Republicans support private education but do not see any reason why the institutions shouldn't be government funded. They particularly like the idea of religious or military schools that are better equipped to teach a state of perpetual obedience. Environment Democrats see the "environment" as another means to control the masses. Even if "Global Warming" only exists in the heads of some out-of-work pacifists, it is certainly a powerful tool to keep the masses towing the line. Further, it is an unbelievable sink hole for public funds. Have you ever looked at what the asbestos scare cost? Republicans were a little late in appreciating the merits of environmentalism and have therefore had to live with some bad press. However, someone finally showed them how much money could be made by simply declaring Freon 12 as the main cause of Global Warming from which billions were made developing and selling a new coolant. This brought them around and now they frantically trying to find the next common household product to ban -- like toilets that use too much water. Government Spending DemocratsDemocrats make no excuses about massive government spending. For the government to provide a happy, healthy, shameless, and even exciting society, for everyone, regardless of their personal means, requires a massive amount of cash from the citizens as well as all you can borrow. Further, to make sure that no citizen gets into trouble and is in bed each night at a reasonable hour, a huge government staff is a necessity. This, in turn, requires every dime the public can spare and just a bit more. RepublicansRepublicans, in their hearts, and especially at campaign time, really would like to cut back on government spending -- especially such luxuries as the social, environmental, and health programs. But there are necessities that it would be irresponsible to avoid. Such things as National Defense, which requires a military budget far greater than any we have had in any major war, can no more be cut back than you can cut back on helping the folks back home that need a superhighway to the new park out in the country. These are essential expenditures unlike the "feel good" stuff of the Democrats. When Iraq threatens our shores by such hostile actions as flying one of their planes over the southern half of their country, we better be ready for action. Individual Liberty DemocratsDemocrats are great believers in the concept of Liberty for all of humanity. It's just that individual humans need to be restrained -- for their on good of course. It would be irresponsible to let an individual endanger their health by eating greasy theater popcorn or drinking water from a mountain stream that some fish has peed in (and hasn't been tested by a government agency). Sadly, when you face the reality, every aspect of human activity must be controlled by the superior knowledge of the government bureaucrat. That government bureaucrats themselves are sometimes accused of being human is a fallacious argument as their holistic association results in superior knowledge. RepublicansRepublicans would like to give people lots of freedom especially those that are economically active such the officers of large corporations and farmers. However, some aspects of human nature just cannot go unpunished. There must be law and order. Violence must be stopped if we have to kill every one of the sorry bastards. Republicans feel that they have the monstrous responsibility of enforcing God's word. It is not a matter of public vote. People who have unapproved sex, get high on anything (including testosterone) except approved drugs such as alcohol, cigarettes, and caffeine, don't regularly go to an approved church, allow their kids to kiss before they get married, and talk smart to policemen that are dutifully beating the hell out of them, must receive appropriate punishment. Military Democrats are very fond of the military as it is a vast receptacle of funds and the defense industry has the reputation of being basically a giant welfare program for mostly engineers and scientists, without which millions of them would have to get a real job. Republicans also love the military for its capacity to absorb unbelievably large quantities of money. Even more they appreciate the importance of importing American Justice to sometimes unreceptive countries by means of our military. Privacy Democrats believe in the sacred right of privacy as guaranteed by our Founding Fathers. Unless, of course, it involves money, children, or your conversation on the phone (it is well known that phones are sometimes used by terrorists). Republicans see no particular reason why you would want privacy. What's the matter: You got something to hide? If you are not doing anything criminal, then privacy should not be a concern, according to them. Too much privacy is a real hindrance to getting every one in jail that ought to be there. Private Property Democrats believe that all property should be shared equally among the people and enough to the animals to ensure their welfare (which they can't do for the people as there is just not enough). To insure the proper usage of property, the government, of course, must be the actual custodian of the property. What you think is yours is actually only on loan to you and may be recalled at any time. The whining of property owners that lose up in the millions of dollars when the government declares that a piece of property is needed for R&R for traveling geese is misplaced as it never belonged to these so-called property owners in the first place. Republicans, on the other hand, definately believe in the right to private property as clearly enunciated by our Founding Fathers. But there is one small catch: The Bible is older than the Constition and trumps it. The bible points out very clearly, "When an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox must be stoned; the flesh may not be eaten. The owner of the ox, however, shall go unpunished", Exodus 21:28. That means that if your house or your car or your bank account is in any remote way associated with a crime, then it must be "stoned to death". The modern translation of "stoned to death" is "given to the government".Surprizingly, an amazing amount of property is in someway related to a crime. For example, let us say that some pot dealer is driving down the street and decides to turn his car around using your driveway. It is obvious that your property has now aided in a crime for if it had not been there, the druggie's auto would have fallen into a bottomless pit. Case closed. Racial Issues Democrats believe all "minority" races to be "disadvantaged" and to need government help. An exception is made for the Orientals because they stubbornly insist on doing quite well for themselves and refuse to suck up. They see minorities mainly as large block votes at bargain prices. Classes should not be encouraged to mix as we need to retain each of their cultures. Republicans have always been fond of the people of color as they have been very well behaved house servants every since Lincoln freed them from slavery. Classes should not be allowed to mix as an inferior offspring will result. Some claim that hybrids in the animal world are usually superior to their parents but this is easily answered as humans obviously are not animals! Religion Democrats think religion is cool especially if it is "New Age", ancient Native American superstitions, Far East shamanism, or African witch doctors. What they can't stand are the low class, red neck religions like Church of God and Southern Baptists. Republicans are in full support of religion and see it as every citizen's duty -- as long as it is "main line". The definition of "main line" is left up to the politicians, of course. Sex Democrats are in full support of sexual activity, especially if it is a little kooky. The concept of the old fashioned "male-female" sexual interaction is best left to the lower animals. Republicans know that the purpose of sex is for procreation and not pleasure. If you must have pleasurable sex, which by definition would be outside of the marriage, then for God's sake have the decency to lie about it! Smoking Democrats consider any form of smoking of tobacco that is produced by the large corporations to be evil. The only material acceptable for smoking is marijuana or Native American ritual tobacco. If you are invited to the home of one of your cool friends and are handed a joint, do not think you have to eat it just because there is a sign on the wall that says, "Thank you for not Smoking". Republicans think smoking is fine as long as it provides the opportunity to ship large quantities of money to the subsidized tobacco farmers and producers. Of course the smoking of any "controlled substance" is not permitted even if tobacco kills far more people. Because, it is the law, you idiot. Republicans are for law and order. Lots of both. War and other "World Cop" Activities Democrats, the "Peace Party", are strongly against war and other police actions and will attempt to create legislation to limit presidential powers and to influence public opinion -- during Republican administrations. Of course, if the Democrats happen to be in charge, then such activities are OK because their purpose is to stop violence and to "prevent further suffering and bloodshed". Republicans, on the other hand, have no hesitation in bombing any recalcitrant country (those that refuse to accept aid in return for submission to U.S. control) "back to the stone age", unless, of course, the Democrats are in power. In that case, they are opposed to such acts because Democrats rarely have a decent "exit strategy". ("Exit Strategy" is a term often used in discussions of sexual activity. It is sort of the opposite to "foreplay".) Wealth Democrats believe in the concept of "equal distribution of wealth" even if they happened to be hoarding quite a pile of it. They justify this by the fact that to do their job requires that they live in a certain high class style that allows them to associate with the influential. Republicans believe that hard work and the economic "invisible hand" will make sure that anyone who deserves it gets it or the reverse as the case may be. By definition, if you are broke and living off the street, you deserve it. Leon Felkins is a coordinator for FEAR (Forfeiture Endangers American Rights), a national nonprofit organization dedicated to reform of federal and state asset forfeiture laws. Got a suggestion for Leon's dictionary? Drop him a line at leonf@magnolia.net! For more guest commentary in American Politics Journal, click here. Copyright © 1999, Leon Felkins All rights reserved

Intro To Political Stockholm Syndrome

MASON SCOTT

Thoughts From A Rogue Progressive

Intro To Political Stockholm Syndrome

             If people were to blame the fire department for the fire a group of arsonists had set, we may find such an occurrence befuddling.  But when those same people then proceed to call in the arsonists to put out the fire, we know we’ve gone down the rabbit hole and entered bizarro-world.

            Some people may feel that the fire-fighters aren’t putting out the fire fast enough.  If one is under the impression that fire-fighters who’ve arrived on the scene aren’t working diligently enough, it’s seems reasonable to entreat them to work more diligently.  However, it seems odd to actually blame THEM for the fire… especially when the reason they aren’t extinguishing the flames more expediently is that the arsonists not only set the house of fire, but sabotaged the fire-engines, forced the fire department to use smaller hoses, and set up road-blocks on every street between the fire station and the burning building. 

Many have duped into voting for G.O.P. candidates. Some of those people are now complaining about the slow recovery—the recovery, that is, from the economic catastrophe of 2008 (the economic catastrophe the G.O.P. itself caused).  Such people are suffering from the political analogue of Stockholm Syndrome.  

Other metaphors are illustrative.  Imagine: After burning himself on a hot stove-top (when the oven-mitt had been removed from his hand), that the victim is convinced by the gas company that the answer is to turn up the gas on the stove while blaming the burn on the oven-mitt…and not to worry about the hot surface.  

That more people may continue to get burned is no deterrent to the gas company, who stands to make yet more money due to the higher gas-bills resulting from the augmented gas-usage.  Convincing people to do more of the dysfunctional activity that got them into trouble to begin with seems not to be as difficult a feat as one would think.  Propaganda can do marvels.  “Right-wing economic policy caused this disaster, so if you want to remedy your problems, listen to those peddling MORE right-wing policy, and blame all your woes on those offering left-leaning remedies.”  The ridiculous logic is swallowed hook, line and sinker by many of the victims of the fall-out from Neoliberalism.

In listening to the absurd ranting of those taken in by right-wing propaganda, we’re reminded of an abuse victim becoming enamored with her assaulter—even as she channels her resentment at those trying to help her.  This misguided attachment and misguided blame are typical of those who are somehow disoriented, confused, or experiencing some kind of neurosis.  Blaming the left-wing for the sluggish recovery of ’09-’10 is analogous to blaming the fire-fighters who’ve arrived on the scene of the burning building.  Deciding to vote Republican as a result of this gripe is analogous to hiring the arsonists to put out the fire instead of keeping the fire department on the scene.

The fall-out from the economic collapse—a collapse caused by the right wing—is thereby attributed to the deeds of the LEFT wing.  After suffering from the horrible consequences of right-wing economic policy, some people have become infatuated with that same right-wing economic policy.  They’ve been duped into embracing their assailant.  They’ve become enamored with the very things that caused their plight—as if a rape victim seeking refuge with the rapist after the attack.

            Observing the flames of the still-burning building, the right-wing segment of the electorate channels their anger at the firemen who’ve arrived on the scene to save the building.  Their solution: Call in the culprits who SET the fire, and depend on THEM to put out the fire.  Thus, more gasoline and less water is seen as the solution.  

How could such an outlandish thing come to pass?  We come to find that the cabal of arsonists have convinced the most credulous and ill-informed victims of the fire that all blame should be placed on the fire department, and that it is only the ARSONISTS who can save the burning building now.

            Preposterously, some people believe this fraudulent account.  How?  Why?  When we are frustrated, angry, disoriented and ill-informed, we NEED someone to blame—a direction to channel our resentment.  But we won’t necessarily know who SHOULD be blamed.  We will thus be susceptible to being persuaded to blame the wrong people—even those who offer solutions—while running right back into the arms of those who caused our tribulation.

The explanations all seem to boil down to one factor: lack of information and/or simply being under the impression that false things are true.  In other words, it is some combination of being UN-informed and being MIS-informed.  The former can be attributed to lack of education and cognitive lethargy.  The latter can be attributed to the mentally lazy and the credulous being taken in by right-wing propaganda.

One is reminded of a patient dying of lung cancer, caused by smoking, who has gone to the medical doctor—a doctor who is trying to help his dire situation by prescribing treatments for his ailment.  Imagine that he is somehow convinced (by the cigarette companies) that the cigarette companies offer the best solutions to his problem.  He thus resuming his smoking, even as the medical doctor insists that he wean himself off of the nicotine.  The doctor is subsequently blamed by the patient for his cancer…simply because the treatments haven’t cured the cancer…which continues as his lungs continue to be filled with tar.

“More smoking!” the Millerites insist, “…is what will solve your problems.  Behold, the doctor hasn’t eliminated the cancer, so blame HIM for the lung damage.”  It never occurs to the patient that he needs to STOP SMOKING in order for the doctor’s prescriptions to be effective.  He’s too busy being angry about the cancer that he simply yearns for someone to blame.  The cigarettes are fulfilling, and the medical doctor—who is prescribing all these un-enticing-sounding things—is standing before him, ready to be blamed for the medical problems.  He temporarily cut back on the cigarettes, but blames the continuation of the cancer to the cut-backs—and attributes the ailment to the treatment.  He will thus look for the enticing solutions offered by his new friends: the cigarette companies.

The parallels with the right-wing movement’s sentiments regarding their economic woes couldn’t be more salient.  The corporatists have seduced them.  A case-study is the reaction on the “right” to Obama’s Keynsian stimulus after his election.  The stimulus, it was clearly shown, WORKED…and, if anything, should have been much larger (a larger stimulus would have worked even better).  YET…strangely, certain people have been convinced by right-wing propaganda that the stimulus DIDN’T work.  They are thus persuaded to advocate for a resurgence of Neoliberalism: more of the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.

If this is not an analogue of Stockholm Syndrome, then nothing is.

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