As others have noted, the 'ground zero mosque' hysteria, whipped up by the white-right and the corporate media, is this year's version of 'death panels' and other nonsense that sandbagged Democrats last August. What's remarkable is that the party keeps falling for it. A party so cowardly doesn't deserve to remain in "power," if you can call their recent run being in power — a minority of lockstep Republicans have managed to block most meaningful legislation. A party so stupid doesn't deserve to survive, when it could run on the rhetoric of Harry Truman or FDR or its few contemporary real Democrats (Rep. Alan Grayson, Sen. Bernie Sanders et al). But it won't. That it could fall for the same play over and over, again and again. The president has given a few good speeches, including this one in Seattle earlier this week. Unfortunately, the Obama magic has fallen into a credibility gap with an administration run by Wall Street and Clintonites.
I know all this is true. I just hate to consign our nation to more of the same right-wing governance. On and on until...what? Perhaps the Democrats must go the way of the Whigs. Yet an America that has lost its lead in college degrees — lost the ability to value education and thinking in the age of Sarah Palin and suburban arrogant-ignorance — won't embrace a progressive agenda. Will it? We may never know because the major media outlets are themselves either compromised or terrified. Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox "News" and the Wall Street Journal, is openly giving money to the Republicans as well as tilting coverage. This is just the opening salvo in corporate money that will gain even more control over our government thanks to the "conservative" Supreme Court. (Do the Democrats think it was wise, say, to have two presidential nominees in 16 years from Massachusetts?)
Yet this is neither 1994 nor even 1988, when Michael Dukakis was punked by the late Lee Atwater, the political daddy of Karl Rove. The list of differences would be long and almost all are alarming and risky. The most immediate and volatile is unemployment. America has never seen a jobs crisis like this since the Great Depression — and then we were still the world's largest creditor nation and enjoyed the most powerful industrial base. Now we have at least 16 percent real unemployment and no prospect of recouping those lost jobs. Indeed, highly profitable companies are cutting jobs, freezing wages and, in one high-profile case, demanding pay cuts. In any other time, this would be the making of social and political strife. Don't assume that flat-screen TVs and Wal-Marts will keep the peace forever.
The disconnect on jobs between average people and the elites is startling. It goes beyond corporate money in politics to the end of meritocracy, the inability of a new Harry Truman to rise, the impenetrable reign of a permanent aristocracy. The elites have jobs. They've always had jobs at high wages. They make much of their money from investments, not wages. They have benefited from deregulation, jobs offshored, industry consolidation, tax cuts. This is as true of Democrats as Republicans, although the latter is far more cruel in its policies toward working people. The former, however, will do no more than nibble around the edges of what must be done. Members of this American nobility — perpetuated now by the tax system, including the lack of inheritance taxes — can't even imagine what it's like to worry about paying the rent, or being under the boot of a venal employer.
In fact, the jobs crisis can be addressed. But it will take more than D.C. excuses. It will take extraordinary measures.
Here are a few: 1) Play China's game of stealth protectionism and "strategic industries," such as sustainable energy; this, not American "free trade," is the future. The World Trade Organization is the walking dead. 2) Break up the big consolidated industries and provide incentives for the pieces to establish, or re-establish, their headquarters in cities outside New York and other elite metros. Also, eliminate the incentives for job-killing mergers. 3) Create a major infrastructure program to rebuild regular rail service, and built high-speed rail and transit, including retrofitting suburbia for a high-cost energy future; this would include many permanent jobs, and should include re-starting American manufacturing of these products. 4) Aggressively fund education and research. 5) Tax and regulate the hell out of Wall Street gambling; encourage capital to be put to productive, jobs-creating investments. The spending aspects of these measures would be investments that would more than pay for themselves — as opposed to, say, trillions for war.
And that brings me to, 6) Stop the empire. We can't afford it. We can't fix all the troubles of the world, and by "fighin' 'em there" we are breeding millions of enemies that will cause untold damage. We're also breeding those enemies by our soft theocracy. Nothing would have done more to undercut the radicals in the Muslim world than to celebrate the Islamic cultural center in lower Manhattan. But that's not profitable theater for the white-right and their corporate masters. Neither, apparently, is making the serious moves to stem the collapse of the middle class before its too late.
Good points Jon. I must admit that the mainstream and cable media have become masters at distracting the masses while truly important events occur elsewhere.
This mosque thing is our latest "Brittany" or "Lindsey" distraction.
No one makes the connection between today's news about higher jobless numbers at the same time the Potash Corp. CEO is set to make $445 million in a merger. Gee??? I don't know??? Is the guy going to use some of that money to make a movie about building a mosque in NY, starring Lindsey Lohan?? Now that would be news that would get the people's attention.
democrats are cowardly and corporate owned. republicans are arrogant and corporate owned.
I am just holding my breath until November. The outcome of this election will show me the following:
Since congress has an approval rating in the teens:
If we re-elect 80+% of incumbents, we are screwed, the end will be coming and I will have given up all hope of us turning this train wreck around.
If we re-elect 50 to 80 percent of incumbents, MAYBE we still have a slim chance of regaining our government.
If we re-elect 50% or less of incumbents, then the message will be strong. After kicking serious butt in DC, we can then go after the so called "American corporations" who have trashed our country in exchange for "this quater's profits".
Sorry about the rant. I'm so pissed that our government thinks it can lie to us so blatantly and expect us to buy it. NOAA coming out and saying "hey there's no more oil in the gulf". I hate it. I hate being lied to.
Posted by: azrebel | August 19, 2010 at 12:27 PM
Since we're all relatively sophisticated creatures here, there's obviously no reason to dust off the pom poms and rip a cheer for the Democratic Party. Still, I think there's a larger problem with party politics in this country. The Democrats - love 'em or whatever - are still a broad-based coalition. You've got unions, greens, minorities, and increasingly, professionals. By contrast, Republicans are a church. Their tenets are white skin, "free" markets, and social grievance. This church is strongly tribal and it sees infidels everywhere. It relishes the Kulturkampf because it has no rational policy aims aside from winning power. It's still crazy after all these years.
This has created a stark disadvantage for Democrats. Rather than blindly rallying around its leaders, Democrats question and backbite. Republicans, on the other hand, jump when Fox says jump. Winning is the only thing that matters to them. They're the football team. We're the nerds in the library.
What this ultimately means is that Democrats are morally bound to make the best of bad situations while Republicans can relish making bad situations even worse. To look at the past two years is to see one party grappling with real-world issues and one party nihilistically blocking any rational debate about those issues. This is a recipe for madness and catastrophe.
I like calling Republicans assholes.
My best-hope scenario for this country is that Republicans self-annihilate through their own cruelty and ugliness. What we desperately need is a rational right in America. We need adults, not buffoons like Ben Quayle prancing about playing tough guys. Granted, the current prognosis is not good. But the disproportionately old and demented Republican cohort will not live forever.
Democrats are paying a price for being the party of complexity, nuance, compromise, and compassion. If we were assholes, we'd have an easier time fighting the Right. I'm half-tempted to go there but I'm not sure it's worth killing my soul over.
Posted by: soleri | August 19, 2010 at 02:36 PM
Great column Jon. I remember Lee Atwater actually with great respect. At least he could play a damn good electric guitar. Rove can only play...Atwater was a great political fighter. Rove is, as the Dallas Morning News author Wayne Slater put it, bush's brain. Say no more.
Posted by: Leah Beth Ward | August 19, 2010 at 06:00 PM
Holodomor. That is the future. The policy of the US government is to deliberately starve Americans.
How many Americans will starve before the revolution begins?
Posted by: Mick | August 19, 2010 at 06:04 PM
Just wait until the mass layoffs start happening before Christmas.
We live in a country with no jobs at all.
Posted by: Mick | August 19, 2010 at 06:16 PM
The job numbers hit 500k filings again. I thought the economy sucked, but I didn't think we'd hit that level again.
NAFTA, Reaganomics and suicidal trade policies championed by the GOP are where I point the finger.
Posted by: Chris M | August 19, 2010 at 09:04 PM
The GOP wants to crush US wages to a 3rd-world level. They intend to do this. Don't be surprised. The GOP wants massive unemployment.
Posted by: Mick | August 20, 2010 at 05:27 AM
The High Priest of the False Equivalency, David Broder, had a fairly good column in yesterday's Post. He did his usual pox-on-both-their-houses harrumph. But his closing paragraphs were quite good. It turns out Senator Jon Kyl is deliberately undermining American and global security by holding up ratification of the new strategic arms treaty. Why? Because he wrongly believes inspections of Russian long-range nuclear bases is continuing. The old START treaty lapsed last December.
Savor the irony. Imagine if Michelle Obama took a vacation that did as much damage to American interests as Kyl is currently doing. Imagine more than 1% of Americans knowing or caring about this actual - as opposed to made-up - issue. Do Republicans win by deliberately sabotaging our national interest? I'm not sure what other conclusion any observer could draw.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081804692.html
Posted by: soleri | August 20, 2010 at 09:05 AM
2 years before Obama took the reins, January 2006, unemployment 5%, 4.3% inflation and the 2006 budget deficit was barely $2 billion bucks. 2 years after The One took over and 4 years after Congress went to democrat control- 9.5% unemployment, 500 gazillion dollar deficit, foreclosures at record pace, and the entoire private sector is destroyed or owned by The Magnificent One, Big Brother.
How tough a call do you think it is allocating responsibility for this?
Wake up Liberal fools
Posted by: strypz1 | August 21, 2010 at 12:18 PM
@strypz1: "the 2006 budget deficit was barely $2 billion bucks"? Thanks for the laugh. Correct answer: $296 billion. Bush's last deficit? $1.3 trillion. Smarter trolls, please.
Here's another interesting viewpoint on the current subject:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dean-baker/when-wall-street-rules-we_b_688866.html
Posted by: soleri | August 21, 2010 at 01:00 PM
strypz1, we like to steer clear of name calling on this blog and limit ourselves to civil dialogue and humor where necessary. If you like the name calling thing, you are always welcome to post comments on AZCENTRAL.COM. All they do is rant and rave and call each other names, 24/7.
For the rest of you I have another "theory" of mine. My theory is that the folks in D.C. depend regularly on the rest of us common folks to get "distracted" by the size of the numbers they throw around back there. Since I am not a trained economist, I can provide no educated opinion about whether we should tax more or spend less or vice versa. You've all heard all the arguments.
Here's some simple math from a simple guy: If I could wave a magic wand and return 10,000,000 of the jobs to the US that had been lost over the past few years AND if each job paid $70,000 per year AND if the government taxed those jobs at the rate of 100%, we would only raise enough money to offset 1/2 of the $1.4 trillion deficit. In layman's terms, that sure looks to me like we have "a spending problem".
In the first half of my life, a million dollars was a big deal.
In the second half of my life, a billion dollars was a big deal.
This trillion stuff is scary.
Posted by: azrebel | August 21, 2010 at 03:23 PM
Perhaps one definition of "short term memory loss" would cover the inability to go back 3 years and chart the sea of toxic debt the US banksters had issued. CMO's (collateralized mortgage obligations) were an element. They resembled the shady grocer's old practice of grinding old out of code hamburger in with the good. Nobody really knew what they were getting . . . did they?
Posted by: Jim Hamblin | August 21, 2010 at 03:41 PM