Archive for Politics

George Orwell Was Off by 27 Years

July 19, 2011 Economics, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

I am truly frightened by the debate on the debt ceiling. Today, every single Republican I saw on television said “Where is the President’s plan? He has no plan.” That was obviously a message directive from the Republican Ministry of Truth. (In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth was anything but.) The goal of the “talking point” is to lay blame for the economic catastrophe they have already caused and the one they are flirting with now at Obama’s feet. The fact that Obama didn’t issue a specific document entitled The President’s Plan to Cut the Deficit doesn’t mean he wasn’t working diligently to promote a plan. What do they call the weeks of negotiations headed by Joe Biden to cut a deal that the Republicans walked away from?

Our dismal news media, which is unable to separate rationality from idiocy, would have us believe that uncompromising tea party politicians have coherent economic principles. They do not. Since they speak only about “unnecessary spending” and protecting so-called job creators, it is obvious to me that they are completely willing to precipitate a new economic catastrophe in order to blame Obama and gain the presidency in 2012.

That’s why I am afraid and why I am considering taking my savings out of the bank and keeping it in cash in case there is a run on the banks. Bad things are possible when those who control the fate of others are completely detached from reality. Whether out of cunning or an irrational ideology, many Republicans see it as in their interest to oppose everything Obama does, no matter how reasonable.

In the media, we routinely have to put up with the conventional wisdom that voters will blame Obama if the jobs’ picture doesn’t improve. Republicans crashed the economy due to run-away, unregulated financial speculation and yet it’s Obama’s fault there are no jobs. Taxes are at the lowest level in years, were lowered under Bush, and still the economy tanked and fails to recover. But the Republican answer is still lower taxes and the media treats this as a rational idea.

There was a Republican on with Chuck Todd (MSNBC) this morning. I didn’t catch his name but he said something like this: “When businesses are in trouble they lay people off and close divisions. After the cuts investors see that the company took the right action and is ready to grow again. This is what we need to do in our economy.” This statement shows that Republicans can’t tell the difference between a business, whose purpose is profits, and the government. They believe some citizens must suffer so the books can be balanced and the economy can start to grow again. But cutting jobs in the overall economy does not produce a more profitable economy in the same way that cutting jobs increases corporate profits. It produces greater unemployment and a longer, deeper economic downturn.

For more on the Republican use of Orwellian opposite-speak, see: http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2011072815/ignorance-index-iv-job-killing-de-regulation.

The Government is Not a Business

June 27, 2011 Economics, Media, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth No comments

Have we forgotten whose policies caused the plunge?

In the graphic above, lifted from ABC’s “This Week” with Christiane Amanpour, the yellow line shows how much deeper the current recession is than all previous recessions, at least since 1980. So because the economy is not healing fast enough, we should turn its management back to the people whose policies caused the crash in the first place? Look doctor, my loved one isn’t getting better as fast as I would like. So I think I’m going to go back to the doctor who administered the poison. You know, because whatever you’re trying to do isn’t working. Maybe that other doctor will be good this time.

This reasoning seems to be treated as perfectly logical in the lame stream media. That’s right, I’m using Sarah Palin’s phrase, but for the complete opposite reason. The lame stream media seems to accept the Republican spin that reducing the deficit is the most important step we can take to create jobs. Why? It’s clearly bullshit. Yes we need to cut the deficit, but to even pretend that this will somehow revive the economy is ludicrous. Cutting is cutting. You can’t cut programs without cutting jobs.

What does a CEO do when he needs to get the company back on solid footing? He cuts jobs. He lays people off. He reduces spending to improve the bottom line and get profits back up. Fine. This restoration of the company’s fiscal health doesn’t create jobs, it costs jobs.

The policies the Republicans are trying to put through are not about jobs. They are about deficit reduction, which is essentially restoring the country to a fiscal balance. They seem to view government as a big corporation that is not in good fiscal health and themselves as CEOs who will cut spending and restore the company to the black. They clearly care more about fiscal responsibility, i.e. profits, than they do about the well-being people. This is about the ideology, or rather mythology, of personal freedom. When people are free from government regulations and programs that take money from the worthy workers and wealthy job-creators and give it to the undeserving lazy poor then everything will be in balance and a growing economy will be magically restored.

Not only is this ideology totally wrong, with no possible way of creating growth, it will exacerbate the destabilizing disparity of more money going to fewer and fewer super rich overlords. This is fascism and it’s where Republican policies have been and will continue taking us.

At this moment in time, as the Republicans petulantly refuse to consider any discussion of closing loopholes on their large corporate puppet masters, it seems as if many of these zealots truly believe in the righteousness of their cause and are willing to crash the global economy in the name of fiscal balance. This is shear madness. And yet the “free press” pretends that it’s a legitimate approach. How can one not be pessimistic when clear stupidity passes for a valid economic option and when people are so deluded and mislead that they will seriously consider returning the patient to the care of the poisoner?

Corporate Interests Do Not Equal Societal Good

May 1, 2011 Politics, Values, Wealth No comments

This video from the Network of Spiritual Progressives explains clearly why our political system is leading us to a society of haves and have nots–where there are fewer richer haves and more poorer have nots. Look, we all want to be rich and/or famous, but this doesn’t need to happen without a little more balance and attention to what’s ultimately in everyone’s interest. 

Fear

January 6, 2011 Congress, Consciousness, Economics, Politics, Republicans, Values, Wealth One comment

Now that the new Republican Congress is off and running, I’m becoming more fearful about the planet’s future prospects. As arguably the world’s most dominant economic power, the policies our Congress enacts affect the whole world. The faulty, incoherent, non-rational belief system of the new Republican majority cannot possibly lead to positive results. Only the wealthy will benefit from their policies. The rest of the world’s population will suffer.

So how do progressives—who believe in a more balanced, rational, caring application of our collective knowledge to reduce human suffering—counter this onslaught of self-righteous lunacy? I wish I had an easy answer. But I know the solution involves the reframing of our politics to a more empathetic, HumansTogether attitude that focuses on what we have in common and not on how we disagree. That is the mission of this site.

Fortunately, I believe that there is an increasing awareness that we need this refocusing. Many of the people in my social circle understand that a system based on creating wealth for the few and hardship for the masses is not sustainable. I believe there is a yearning a new kind of idealism and a revaluing of what is important in life away from the purely materialistic.

I also believe that once people start paying attention to the way this Congress behaves, many will recognize their transparent hypocrisy, irrationality and incompetence. But politics is now being driven by entrenched emotions, enflamed by a mass media that makes more money when there is conflict.

The ideal antidote to would be a new sixties movement—a massive rejection of the current value which favors wealth over well-being. This would be a movement based on consciousness raisin; a movement based on peace, love and understanding. What’s so funny about that?

Love is Wise

December 29, 2010 Consciousness, Economics, Emotional Energy, Politics, Values No comments

From a friend’s Facebook post, I saw a video of Bertrand Russell giving advice to people who might see the tape in 1000 years. His quote was “Love is wise, hatred is foolish.” What a great thing to live by—something that should be taught as the basis of all moral teaching. The Golden Rule is a corollary to this statement.

One might also conclude: “love is positive, hatred is negative,” or “love is positive emotional energy, hatred is negative emotional energy.” This is in line with a metaphor I’ve been thinking about lately that I think is very powerful as a guide to human activity: humans are emotional energy batteries. We store the emotional energy we receive and generate that emotional energy back to the world.

So if kids receive a lot of negative emotional energy in their formative years they transmit this negativity back as dysfunctional adults. If kids receive a lot of positive emotional energy they also tend to reflect that back as successful adults. Of course, there may be a genetic component that helps determine whether people are generators of positive or negative emotional energy. But regardless of a person’s innate orientation, negativity begets negativity and positivity begets positivity.

That’s why wars seldom solve things, particularly when the negative energy of violence does not have a clear target. WWII presented a clear evil with a mad dictator directing a well-defined, military entity. In the kind of wars we’re fighting now, the negative energy of violence is much more likely to create stored negative energy in a population than to curb future violence.

At some level our civilian and military leaders understand this, which is why there is an emphasis on building schools and stabile, secure areas in Afghanistan where people can live their lives without the negative energy of fear and violence. But our bombs often create more negative energy than can be overcome by other positive acts. And our fundamentalist enemies are big time negative energy generators.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives has a better solution.

“The NSP wants advanced industrial countries of the world to use their resources to eliminate once and for all global and domestic, poverty, homelessness, and hunger; provide quality education and health care for all; and repair the global environment. As an initial commitment, we want the U.S. to donate at least 1-2% of its Gross Domestic Product each year for the next twenty years, in the form of a Global Marshall Plan (GMP).”

The link is here: http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/gmp_one. This would certainly be following a wise policy as defined by Bertrand Russell.

We Need a HumansTogether Understanding

December 27, 2010 Consciousness, Global Ecosystem, Politics, Values No comments

A lot has happened politically since the last post. The goal for 2011 is to make this a much more active blog. I am more convinced than ever that unless the humans on this planet come to understand that underneath our different looks, locales, and beliefs, we are all the same species. And as a species, we need to pull together to avert the coming environmental disaster. If we don’t, there will be a tremendous increase in suffering for almost all of us.

Achieving a HumansTogether understanding involves promoting our core empathetic nature as a species. Promoting our cooperative nature over our competitive nature has a political component. Neither the Democratic or Republican parties are framing a solution based on a HumansTogether vision. In fact, Republicans are marching aggressively in the exact wrong direction.

Yet I remain optimistic. A few months back I read an interview with legendary historian Lawrence Goodwyn on Obama, the larger currents in our political life, and the possibility of a rebirth in our democratic culture. I share his belief that:

“it will become increasingly transparent in the coming year that the politics of the GOP is absolutely incoherent. Much of the Republican tent is simply flapping in the breeze behind a cascade of public lies. As it now presents itself, the so-called party of conservatism has nothing to bring to the economic crisis except demagogy. So long-term despair is unwarranted for Democrats. They need to harness their poise and undertake to be politically creative not just right now but for the next six years.”

Here is the link to the entire article: http://www.alternet.org/news/148582/lawrence_goodwyn%3A_the_great_predicament_facing_obama/

In the meantime, remember that we as humans all need to recognize that:

  • We are all imperfect,
  • At the core level we are all the same, and
  • In the long run, we are all in the same fragile planetary ecosystem.

Anger vs. Rationality

September 20, 2010 Economics, Politics, Values No comments

The conventional wisdom is that 2010 will be a “wave election” in which Republicans are propelled into office because of an angry electorate who thinks that the country is going in the wrong direction. Well I understand the anger and the wrong direction feeling. What I don’t understand is why any sane person would think the Republicans have a solution. Being against improvements in healthcare, unemployment benefits, and re-regulation of Wall Street isn’t a plan. Stopping government action is not a jobs plan. Even the laudable goal of balancing the budget will not create more jobs. It will create more lay-offs.

The fact is that “throw the bums out” is not a strategy. The government is not in the way of the free market. The government, particularly the Republican leadership, is owned by the wealthy, who are simply looking out for their own interests. If unfettered capitalism is so good, why did we have a crash? And why do most Americans seem to think that returning control of the government to those who screwed it up is such a good idea?

Let’s say that the economy is a child who was injured by its caretaker—injured so badly that recovery will take a lot of rehabilitation and time. So now, because the healing isn’t fast enough, we want to return the child to the caretaker that inured it? If the polls are to be believed, apparently so.

Anger and fear-mongering about “socialism” are not a plan. I’m angry and fearful too. I’m angry that the corporate chieftains and Wall Street types who control the economy are perpetuating the myth that somehow government is to blame and that if we do nothing things will fix themselves. People seem to think that the rich have more because they deserve more and that we should not tax them because that will mean they won’t do as much for us. This is bull.

The rich, like all of us, are motivated by self-interest. This is fine up to a point. But when the rich control both parties and rig things so they can suck up as much wealth as they can, a little balance needs to be restored. Those who think that the government is the enemy are being duped into a self-fulfilling prophesy of voting for people who either have a misguided ideology that no government equals some miraculous cure or for people who are deliberately misleading them in order to keep the government from interfering with the continued sucking of the public’s neck by their wealthy vampire overlords.

I say be angry; but let’s have a rational plan of action that moves us toward a fairer government. The rich will survive just fine; even there is a little mandatory moderation in how much financial blood they can suck. Don’t be a willing victim and vote Republican against your own self-interest.

Driven by Fear

August 18, 2010 Consciousness, Energy, Politics, Uncategorized, Values No comments

In a previous blog, I talked about positive and negative freedom—how progressives are more apt to promote the freedom to and conservatives seem more oriented toward freedom from. For example, the freedom to get married for gays and the freedom from government intrusion for business owners.

But perhaps a stronger way to show the difference between conservative and progressive ideology is to think about positive and negative emotional energy. Negative emotional energy is fear, hate, insecurity, greed, exclusion and a rigid set of beliefs. Positive emotional energy is hope, love, sharing, community, inclusion, and open-minded critical thinking. As one who is solidly in the latter camp, it seems pretty obvious which ideology is positive and which is negative.

Conservatives, Republicans and Tea Partiers all seem to be driven by fear: fear of immigrants, fear of government, fear of terrorists, fear of gays, fear of their tax money being given to the poor who didn’t work for it. They have a totally erroneous belief that the world consists of isolated individuals, some who are deserving—themselves and the wealthy—and some who are not—anyone not like them or poor. They don’t realize no human being is an island and that we’re all connected.

As pointed out in an excellent Alternet.org article (link below), de Tocqueville observed about the distinctive American mentality more than 150 years ago, “Such folk owe no man anything and hardly expect anything from anybody. They form the habit of thinking of themselves in isolation and imagine that their whole destiny is in their own hands. Thus, not only does democracy make men forget their ancestors, but also clouds their view of their descendants and isolates them from their contemporaries. Each man is forever thrown back on himself alone, and there is danger that he may be shut up in the solitude of his own heart.” [from http://tinyurl.com/29r2x3r]

Human progress is marked by successive expansions of the community of man, such as the abolition of slavery, the expansion of civil and womens’ rights, and an understanding that we all share one planet. Conservatives are desperately resisting this expansion of consciousness. They seem determined to hang on to views that are not consistent with progress, views motivated by the negative emotional energy of fear.

This site is about promoting an understanding that beneath each individual’s beliefs is a human who needs as much positive, supportive, and respectful emotional energy as possible. May hope, critical thinking and community, triumph over fear, rigidity, and greed. One can be optimistic because that is the general trend of historical progress. But we are entering a time of hardship, and fear is an unfortunate, negative, but natural human response. It will take more than hope for continued human progress and a more global species consciousness to evolve.

Dynamic Equilibrium vs. More More More

July 26, 2010 Economics, Energy, Politics, Values No comments

In high school I learned that living systems, if they are healthy, achieve a state of dynamic equilibrium. That is they are in balance. There are a lot of processes going on but they act on each other to stay in balance. A simple example is any local ecosystem prior to man’s arrival. There may be too much rain or too many of one kind of species for a while, but the overall ecosystem comes back into balance over time. Without humans, the whole earth would be in a kind of dynamic equilibrium.

Clearly humans have thrown the natural balance of the planet out of whack. We’re using a huge amount of energy and creating a huge amount of waste product. Without a change, the energy required to keep human progress going will run out. More people chasing a better life will need more and more energy—more coal, more oil, more water, more food. More energy for more machines and more energy for more humans.

More energy use means more waste by product—carbon dioxide, methane, toxic chemicals, trash. And this waste is what’s threatening to throw the planet into a new state of dynamic equilibrium that will be extremely detrimental to humans and other life on the planet. Balance will be restored but at the cost of many lives and much hardship. But you probably know this already. The question is can we change?

To change the way we act requires a change in beliefs and values. Right now most people on the planet are operating with a core set of beliefs that is not aligned with our best interests or the true nature of the universe. We believe that the pursuit of happiness equals the pursuit of stuff, of wealth. We think the more stuff we have the happier we’ll be. Our economic systems are set up to encourage this, to promote “wealth creation.”

But it turns out, according to Jeremy Rifkin in The Empathetic Civilization, that “once people have achieved a minimum level of well-being that allows them to adequately survive and prosper, additional accumulations of wealth do not increase their happiness but, rather make them less happy…” [p 497].

The idea that we must accumulate all that we can, that life is a competition, is ingrained in all of us. “I’ve earned this stuff, it’s mine, and the government doesn’t have any right to take it and share it with others who didn’t work for it.” That’s the way the prevailing value system shakes out if you’re a “conservative.” But unless we refocus on creating a dynamic planetary equilibrium for all, rather than wealth creation for a few, we face disaster for all.

The End Is Near

July 2, 2010 Economics, Energy, Evolution, Politics, Values No comments

If you’re awake and paying attention you may have noticed that things aren’t going so well right now. The oil spill in the gulf is a harbinger of more difficult challenges ahead as we have to go to greater depths, literally and figuratively, to find the oil that powers our world. That’s because the end of easy cheap oil is here. That’s bad news for the economic reality of the life we’ve become accustomed to. Because to work properly, the dynamics of our current economy depend on constant growth fueled by cheap oil. So the end of life as we know it is near. And the change that is bearing down on us is not pretty.

Of course it’s not like the economic system we have has been working all that well anyway. The middle class is going backward and the millennials are really going backward in terms of prosperity. The world economy had to stop growing sometime. Constant growth—in the stock market, in home prices, in ever more affordable energy—has never been possible. But it’s only now, when it’s ending that we realize we shouldn’t have expected an ever-rising arrow of economic well-being.

The idea that most of our kids will have a better life than we did has already ended. With cheap energy ending, global warming coming and a world economic system increasingly unable to sustain itself at the current level, life as we’ve come to know it is definitely ending.

The question is how bad will it be when it ends? You see, many great civilizations, such as Rome and the Egyptians, collapsed not because of conquerors, but primarily because they grew too large for the energy resources available. Their agricultural land went fallow and in the case of Rome at least, the dark ages ensued. (This is laid out in the great 2009 book The Empathetic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin.) Right before the industrial revolution Europe was entering an energy crisis because the wood they used for virtually all housing and energy was almost gone. Fortunately rail and mining technology arrived just in time for a transition to coal without a real nasty economic collapse.

Will we be so fortunate? Or will we only transition to new forms of cleaner, sustainable energy after life as we know it ends? Right now the power lies in the hands of those who control the oil and the industries that rely on it. Unless we all rise up and recognize it’s already ending and work together to make a transition many of the humans on this planet are definitely going feel extreme stress. I don’t want civilization as I’ve known it to end. But unless we radically change course, the end truly is near. It’s too bad that many in power have let self-interest be a blanket they pull up over their heads to keep from having to acknowledge how near the end is.

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