While you were out

Obama's honeymoon, if it ever really existed -- remember, not one House Republican voted for the stimulus -- is over. Some have their theories as to the signs behind this turning point, but I have no doubt. It was the return of the Great American Freak Show, in the form of the wall-to-wall news coverage of the death of a song-and-dance man, once gifted, later creepy. If the triple-digit increase in television ratings are any sign, this is what you want from your news media. It is the "national conversation" you crave. Can a missing comely teenage blonde be far behind?

Obama's election gave us a moment of seriousness, to take stock of the troubles bearing down on us and make the urgent and consequential adjustments necessary to address them. Yet it is apparently not to be. Imagine if the outpouring for the song-and-dance man had been applied to universal healthcare or global warming? There would be no hopeless bottleneck in a Congress owned by big business, no Dianne Feinstein saying that criticism about healthcare legislation from the left "doesn't move her." No calling climate change a "hoax." As Paul Krugman pointed out in his Monday column, "The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected...And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course."

Our present course, sadly, is to find fresh distractions. If you care to take a moment, however, here's a bit of what you probably missed in the past few days, reported by that hopeless "old media."

The revolution will apparently not be Twittered. Despite Americans' endless faith in clever electronic entertainment, it can't break through some historical lessons (if Americans still studied history). Among them: real revolutions tend to happen because of a collision of rising expectations with a weak ruling elite. Ask Louis XVI -- or the Shah of Iran, who built a modern though authoritarian state, but was too indecisive to do away with Khomeini and his henchmen, too conservative and rigid to address the aspirations of the rising middle class. Thus, whatever the hopes of today's Iranian urban dwellers, the mullahs and military are not willing to step aside -- no matter how many tweets are hurled at them, no matter how much wishful thinking the West indulges in.

In suburban Louisville, a minister invited his church members to "a gun celebration" at Sunday service. It was a clever stunt to get a little news coverage, contained some of the current right-wing menace, and amazing that none of the rednecks accidentally shot themselves or each other, or got into a firefight over the potato salad at the covered-dish lunch. Farther south, a grimmer reality takes place. The drug lords that would make the Mexico into a failed state receive their weaponry from gun dealers in the U.S., especially places such as Arizona. The firearms were used to murder 6,200 of God's precious, individual creations last year. No comment from the pastor, but the gun lobby fights every attempt to control this sinister trade.

It's no scoop like the one delivered by the vaunted TMZ (owned, new media disciples, by the old media conglomerate Time Warner), but the New York Times took us to see the misery visited on other of our fellow human beings in Peru. The smelter is one of the world's most toxic sites, and yet it provides a livelihood of sorts to the people who live in the isolated village of La Oroya. It's owned by the American Ira Rennert, a billionaire so wealthy he built one of the largest houses in this country. He's no Bill Gates. All he will do in Peru is threaten to shut down the smelter if he's forced to clean it up. I don't know about the gun preacher, but for me, this helps clarify Jesus' statement about the rich man and getting the camel through the eye of a needle. It's not about divine condemnation, but rather self-condemnation. Despite his blessings, this rich man chooses to separate himself from God's creatures and thus God. I don't know whom to pray for more: Rennert or the people of this Andean village. The latter's lives represent the daily existence of perhaps half the people on the planet. Will the entertainment "journalists" report on their afflictions, afflict their oppressors? Explain an ever more complex and small world? Will anyone read it?

But they're not Americans, and you got your tax cut. It shows everywhere from the inability to govern California -- coming soon to a state near you -- to dangerously aging and poorly maintained infrastructure. The deadly Metro crash in the capital of supposedly the richest and most powerful country in the world is at least partly blamed on outmoded equipment. It's a national problem. And yet to feed the entitlement mentality of tax cuts, transit funding at best struggles to maintain an eroding status quo.

While you were out, The Hill reported a bombshell: How the Bush administration used Justice Department leaks to help the re-election of the disgraced Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi. This was no dead song-and-dance man, or even the moralizing Sanford with his Argentine paramour, but still... The entire U.S. attorney scandal and use of the Justice Department to subvert the Constitution ought to be a thriller with consequences. Instead, the young president doesn't want to make waves.

While you were out, no magical bubble revived the economy. Indeed, the outlook is so bleak for whole sections of the United States that at least one university, Kent State, is setting up a think tank on how to shrink cities, some of which were once gems of American civilization.

We should be wondering what is left of the economy in many places. What has replaced millions of good jobs in manufacturing, not just in the Midwest but even in the Southeast (Gov. Sanford's state is a basket case). These workers have not become game developers in Seattle or wireless engineers in San Diego. Left a much poorer nation by the financial crash and years of industry consolidation and jobs sent offshore, many Americans will never get to retire. They are crushed by debt. Their taxes have gone not to investments that will create jobs, but rather to bail out the swindlers who brought on the crash -- with an astounding pricetag. The boys at Goldman Sachs will be fine. But where will these other Americans work as income inequality continues at historic levels? The mortgage boiler rooms have closed. Wal-Mart can only do so much. We will not "social network" our way out of this.

Meanwhile, China is using the crisis to advantage – adding more protectionism for its industries, building infrastructure, investing in research, talking down the dollar. Awaiting our eclipse with the patience of a thousands-year-old civilization reborn.

But if Americans are worried about any of this, they don't show it. They turn to the cable channels. They return to the Great American Freak Show.

Comments

[soleri]

I'm not sure whether the disappointment is Obama himself or the fact that our national conversation is essentially mediated by madmen. When Bush was elected, pushing the nation to new frontiers of right-wing extremism was a walk in the park. When a Democrat is in office, we hug the center line as if it were a precipice. Republicans vote in lock-step or else. Democrats are free to abandon ship if it so pleases their campaign contributors. Our moneyed elite tend to have certain expectations about their political servants.

Obama knows he is fundamentally checked by the default realities created by our hyena media, which are themselves underwritten by the same interest groups that lard the campaign coffers of the political class. It's basic rationale: the rich shall in no way suffer. At all.

We won't get real health care reform, the finanical sector shall continue to have their losses socialized but not their pay scales, gays will get "special recognition awards" and little else, global warming will be deemed too theoretical to worry about, the economy's unwinding and deleveraging will continue apace, and right-wing violence will steadily tick upwards.

How did right-wing extremism get mainstreamed in this country and why is it disallowed to even mention this in our national conversation? Lazy and corrupt pundits wield false equivalencies to undermine any criticism of right-wing hysteria. "Keith Olbermann arched his eyebrows! On TV!" DHS blandly warms of right-wing violence (duh!) and high dudgeon erupts.

The honeymoon was election night. The seven-year itch fast approaches.

[Emil Pulsifer]

It never fails to amaze me how tolerant the "free market" hawks are toward China. (1) It's protectionist; (2) the State constantly intervenes in the economy on a massive and fundamental scale, not only financially but also in mandating activity and its terms; (3) It's currency is also protected, which helps its trade position and cushions it from financial turmoil (though it also makes it non-interconvertible, which is why Chinese currency won't be replacing the dollar any time soon); (4) it's ruled by a dictatorship which outlaws independent unions and insures artificially low wage and benefit structures (some with prison labor) and otherwise keeps overhead low by keeping that pesky workplace and environmental regulation to a minimum (as Fido will tell you, assuming he survived the last toxic scare).

The difference is that today international capital has no national allegiance and welcomes such circumstances provided they are allowed to share in the big profits to be had. As soon as China started allowing foreign investment on terms acceptable to foreign capital, the annual spectacle of "Most Favored Nation trading status" -- cynical bit of hypocrisy that it was -- was done away with altogether. Nobody seems to care about China's political system any more because its New Economic Policy now allows capitalist activity.