Touchy Subjects

Does the Left need a spokesperson? // A Reply to the Nation

The Nation Magazine carried a piece by “Eyal Press” on 07/08/2009 titled “Does Rachel Maddow Speak for the Left?” The writer noted that in a recent Charlie Rose interview Maddow said that the left was disappointed with Obama.  The writer was taken aback because, as a quick perusal of people in New York City testified, most, or “nearly all” expressed shock and dismay and also disagreement with Maddow.

Apparently, whomever these people are, they are nearly all happy with Obama.

Then, the writer tried to explain this discrepancy. What explains it?

1)  Progressives and left-leaning Democrats are pragmatic and don’t want to be raising ideological questions at a time like this.

2)  Bush was so bad, whatever Obama has been doing is smelling like a breath of fresh air.

3)  Obama is a likable guy and it’s just so difficult to tell him bad things.

The Nation has often times presented itself as a clearing house of lefty and progressive ramblings. So, I will give them credit for raising the issue of whether anyone on the left is disappointed with Obama, and why some number of Democrats are not.

It is really sad that we have to be asking ourselves at this time whether or not the left is disappointed in Obama. Charlie Rose asks the question. The Nation’s writer here asks us to consider the question. No one said, not Maddow, or the Nation’s writer, that well, of course the left is disappointed in Obama. 

Maddow, to her credit does say that, yes, the left is disappointed, and if we understand Obama correctly as a centrist business Democrat, not too anti-war, not too good on civil liberties and civil rights, and definitely in the pockets of corporations, we will see that there will be constant conflict between Obama’s administration and the left as we know it.

But, the question is asked because the left is not very good about making itself heard. For one thing, it supported Obama while understanding that Obama would support its positions in rhetoric only. Second, in supporting Obama without extracting any promises or commitments from Obama to give anything in return, the left now has nothing to show for its support. And third, The underlying reason that the left has no power is that it has failed to challenge the underlying assumptions and values that have created the   Leviathan  it opposes on many fronts.

Graceffo’s observed fact that work is distinct from sales is the basis of much that’s evil in this country

Do American workers believe the work they do has intrinsic value? That is, if no one bought the products their company made, that their work made, would American workers still expect to be paid? Should they be surprised or shocked that their company would want to cut their wages or their jobs if the company was no longer competitive or making any money selling their products?

Let’s just say that Joe Shmoe does believe that his work has intrinsic value. Say, the guy has a job, and, based on having that job, he gets married, has kids, buys a house, and a car, and proceeds to go into quite a bit of debt.  Is Joe being reasonable?

According to Antonio Graceffo there is a distinction between manufacturing or producing a product and selling that product. A company does not make money producing that product. It only makes money if and when it sells that product. So, Graceffo tells us,

…An employee believes that his work, his labor, somehow generates an income. This has been his working experience his whole life. Somehow, punching that clock twice each day caused a check to appear at the end of the week. An owner realizes that work, labor, and manufacturing all cost money. Only sales bring money into the company.

Q: What’s Going on with Iran? // A: It’s a “Yojimbo” scenario.

There are at least two issues important to understanding Iran’s current turmoils. One has to do with the conflicts within the elites within Iran over how to govern the country. Escobar says a little about who the leaders are, and what their conflicts might be. Against the conflict between different factions of Iranian elites, their are the vast number of Iranian citizens, both well-to-do and poor, who have wanted the government to give them more support, in the way of jobs and services, or liberty in having fewer religious restrictions.  The second issue has to do with the influence of outsiders on Iranian politics. Spooks working for the United States have been said to have spent around $400 million dollars to bring about what they call “regime change” in Iran. The amount of money spent by our spooks in Iran would be comparable to about $1.2 billion dollars if Chinese spooks worked to elect Obama or McCain.

But, should we see these issues as mutually exclusive? That is, if there’s a problem with corruption in Iran, or religious hubris, does that mean others, like the United States, are justified in manipulating their choices? Or, if American spooks are pitting one faction of their elites against another, does that mean Iranian elites should be, in our estimation,  more innocent?

Kurosawa had something to say about this,

The town has been involved in a fight between rival gangs. The Samurai with no name provokes more and more violence between these gangs that eventually they both destroy themselves.  The principle here is a corollary to ‘divide and conquer.’ It might be held that once you ‘divide,’ you make your opponents fight amongst themselves. This is what we might be concerned about in Iran. The pro-democracy camp are being made to fight against the ‘mullah-ocracy” as Escobar will characterize the Iranian elite.  From the point of view of American spooks, this ‘self-destruction’ might be a good thing, and go to bring about  “regime change.”  But, from the point of view of Iranians  working for the independence of Iran, the mutual destruction of these two factions cannot be a good thing.

Does our political debate about Honduras reflect an underlying philosophical conflict about how we should understand ourselves?

My question is, first, what is going on in Honduras? It’s one of those small central American countries that one would expect the United States to control in some significant way. I’d imagine they would give the military there all their funding, send the officers to ‘torture’ school, and subvert elections. As an American, and one who’s grown up here, I have a good idea what we’re about. But, I could be mistaken, maybe I have a few details wrong. I have to depend on journalists, in a a big way, to look into what the facts are and give me an explanation.

There’s a problem, though, with the journalists. They have the idea that they can’t tell me what’s going on. There are many reasons why they can’t look too closely into Honduras. One reason is that there aren’t that many journalists who know much about Honduras. It’s a poor country. The United States is behind most every political event there, and given how much the U.S. puts into subverting governments, that isn’t going to change. So, in many ways the stories about this country should write themselves.

Another problem is that journalists are vulnerable. They can be killed. They can have their children killed. They can be fired. There are many ways to put pressure on these people to keep them from revealing any ‘secrets’ that might rock the boat down there.

And, third, journalists are saddled with the idea that reasoning about things, things like what’s going on in Honduras, is a matter of logical argument. It has been my contention that this is the idea at the bottom of both Descartes’ idea that his being in his study writing is his own ‘point of view,’ and the journalist’s account of the Honduran President’s story is his ‘point of view.’ Descartes’ problem was that, yes he had reasons for thinking he was in his study writing, but, he has just as many and in many ways the same reasons for thinking he was actually in bed, asleep, dreaming he was in his study writing, he was in no position to decide one way or the other. He could not know what was going on.

Will we Destroy Iran because of Journalist’s Vile Philosophy?

If we look at what our journalists have been writing about Iran, we can see a distinction between what we might call the ‘mainstream’ on one side and certain elements of the ‘left’ on the other. The distinction I want to make here is about the displeasure over the Iranian election and the subsequent discord in the streets. The mainstream argues that the displeasure and discord  arose independently out of  the population’s  inherent desires  for democracy in their country.  The skeptical ‘left’ argues that the displeasure and discord has been created, funded,  and stoked by American spooks in order to bring about ‘regime change.’

What is going on in Iran? // Have American Spooks muddied the waters so much we cannot get a clear picture? // Is a clear picture and the exposure of what’s hidden always such a good thing?

The United States under G. Bush spent a lot of time, energy, and tax dollars threatening Iran with either sanctions, military strikes, or ‘regime change.’ The recent election has been contested within Iran both before the balloting, and afterward when there developed skepticism about the truthfulness of the balloting results.

There was the first thought, on the part of both Iranians who were on the side of the challengers, and outside observers, that the election was stolen. Somehow the big winner got there by fraudulent means.

There soon developed skepticism about that story. The thought was, maybe the Iranian people actually did vote in unexpected numbers for the incumbent, in such a way that made the expectant and heartened  supporters of the challengers disappointed and thereafter skeptical. One support for this skepticism of the skepticism was the fact that there have been stories suggesting that spooks working for the United States have been working within Iran to bring about what they call ‘regime change.’ The details of these efforts were never specified, however, undermining the legitimacy of elections, and therefore the credibility of the Iranian government, would seem to fit within the range of possible strategies. The United States and their spooks have overthrown the government of Iran before in similar ways.

There is a continuing debate about what actually went on with the Iranian election.  Did the incumbent really steal the election.  Do the people now rioting in the streets of Iranian cities have a just complaint about their government? Did the spooks working  hard to change the ‘regime’ in Iran set this situation up. Did they grease palms? Are they now manipulating the information we are getting about Iran? Is this  upheaval in Iran part of an American plan to bring about ‘regime change’ so that some other more manipulable government takes over in Iran?

My own thought, up to this point, has been that the spooks are manipulating the situation and the information as part of an American plan to change the Iranian ‘regime.’ It’s a situation like where a vulture sits waiting for its victim to become too weak, isolated out in the desert, to protect itself any more. Maybe the vulture swoops down and pecks out the poor victim’s eyes to help its demise along. This is the United states waiting for Iran to be too weak or dead to protect itself any more.

But, there is another question about whether the situation in Iran reflects some significant conflict within the country. There is the question whether the theocracy of Iran, much like the religiously oriented governments anywhere,  allow for their people to be free enough. Maybe there are a huge number of people who have legitimate complaints about being run by Islamic religious leaders but aren’t strong enough politically to protect themselves. Perhaps in Iran, the rule by the majority has been suppressing the freedoms of  a large minority?

Why is there such a push within Iran, and in other places around the world,  places such as Cuba, Venezuela, Latin America in general, China, Russia, and Europe, to enforce some kind of top down control of their population? Why is there no real interest in democracy?

When we look at many of the people who have been looking at the United States we hear them ask the same question. Why is there no real interest in democracy in the United States? Why do we find so much emphasis on authoritarian control?

The situation in Iran raises these questions.  I think I just don’t know enough about what’s going on in Iran to say whether my Vulture scenario is true, or how one should understand the Iranian theocracy and its relationship to its own people.

I want here to put together some commentary by others who have been thinking about these issues,

More and different voices go on from this discussion by Escobar.

 

Have some home owners and wannabes been Ripped-Off by loan companies? // Is American Society too accepting of Corporate Scamming to ever protect its People?

The housing crisis is a simple thing, people involved in the financing of home ownership decided they had limited ways of making ‘big’ money. One of their strategies, to make more than small change, was to entice people who had very little into borrowing or going a little bit more into debt,  involving obligations  they may not have been able to pay back very easily. These predators then would lie about the riskiness of those loans as they ‘securitized’ them and sold them off to other equally gullible corporations.

It’s a scam.

Grit TV had one discussion of how some citizen advocates have been trying to take these scammers to court.

 

The Perfect Storm of Criminality // The Wages of Empire seems to be Bankruptcy, the lamentations of our women, etc., etc.

As a catastrophist I spend time thinking about what might go wrong. Well, if we get into a war we will be tempted to spend more on guns than butter and the people at home will suffer. Well, if we spend more on both, then we will ruin our economy. We will become so indebted no one will lend to us, and we won’t be able to pay our bills. Well, if we don’t make anything that people want to buy, then eventually we’ll run out of money in the bank, and we’ll have to go begging. Etc, etc, etc.

Chris Hedges is a catastrophist, too. He has some evidence, though, that the bad shit that he sees possibly happening is actually happening. There will be a meeting. At the meeting there will be people, not our friends, who have been accepting our dollars in exchange for their own goods. Hedges tells us the people at this meeting believe that our money isn’t any good anymore.  We don’t make anything ourselves that anyone wants to buy. The only thing that backs up the dollar any more is our promise that we’ll be able to pay them back. …tap…tap, tap, tap …Well, they don’t see us getting our act together, so they are planning to somehow stop taking all these dollars that  aren’t worth anything.

The problem for them is that if in time the dollar is worth a great deal less, then their exchange of goods for dollars will not have made them anything. So, they want to be careful not to make the load of dollars they all have now worthless before they would be able to get rid of it all. But, they want to get to a position where they are no longer burdened by this situation. They want to be done with us.

The problem for us is that, well, our elites have sucked pretty much all they can out of the economy. They want to leave us holding the bag, so to speak. But, they can’t do this without making it obvious that they have done so as a criminal enterprise.  They have to somehow keep the rest of the world lending money to us so that we can buy their stuff. It’s only in this way that they can continue to suck the profits out of the system right up until they pull their fangs out of our necks and walk away.

Asimov and Iran // Should we be ‘Waiting and Seeing’ ?

There’s been some dispute about the recent election in Iran. The contest had seemed to some outside observers to be going toward the challenger. Yet, the balloting was said to favor the incumbent by a wide margin. The rioting in the streets is supposedly inspired by the challenger’s supporters who feel, we are told, that the election was stolen.

I want to show that people are recommending that we now ‘wait and see’ what will happen to Iran after their recent election. Then, I’ll point out that there are reasons why the ‘wait and see’ recommendation may just be a way of furthering a malicious strategy of ‘regime change’ in Iran. The way to see that we cannot just ‘wait and see’ is suggested by a story written by Isaac Asimov, The Gentle Vultures.

What issues Unify both the ‘Left’ and ‘Right’? // Aaron Russo on Liberty undermined by ‘One World Government’ and ‘9-11’

 

One of the claims Russo makes is that the Bankers have promoted a ‘socialist’ form of government, even though they may not admit it or tout it as one. That is, the idea that the money system should be controlled from above is supposed to be one of the main ideas of Marx and Engels. I wondered about this. If true, that would undermine any leftist’s commitment to whatever they thought was good about Marx’s argument. At least, if Marx lead to the ‘one world totalitarian government’ as Russo and Jones argued, then maybe Marx should be resisted.