Notes to a Young Progressive

Hola mi Gente,
I plan to rest this weekend.

Nationalism

I call him a patriot who rebukes his country for its sins and does not excuse them.
 -- Frederick Douglas

Many years ago, George Orwell wrote a prescient essay on the differences between nationalism and patriotism Orwell’s Notes onNationalism, has as much relevance today as it did when it was written right before the lead up to WWII as nationalistic fervor fed the flames of Nazism and fascism.

Too many people confuse nationalism for patriotism. When I listen to the nationalistic fervor stoked by the likes of Trump and Hillary, for example, it is concerning because theirs is an appeal to fear to a white demographic feeling betrayed -- a population looking for any excuse to explode. The successful Trump/ GOP’s campaign strategy is to create “the other” as different and unpatriotic. It’s been a one-note effort mostly because U.S. conservatives apparently do not know any other strategy.

Another reason political elites use this tactic because it works: tar and feather a candidate by coming up with the scary face of a black killer. At one time that face was the face of Willie Horton. Today, it is any black kid with a hood. Dismiss people who dare question the wisdom of our current foreign policies as “unpatriotic.” Paint the opposition as effeminate and ineffectual and deride them for having the courage to speak out against wars that kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children. And this is just the Democrats.

And it continues to work. It is working partly because the failures of decades of lunatic neoliberal economic policies have created global financial meltdowns and eroded the middle class.

Orwell defined patriotism as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.” I have no argument with this definition

According to Orwell, nationalism is the tendency of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, and “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” In other words, nationalism doesn’t have to be based on an allegiance to a particular nation. This same fanaticism can be applied to any “ism”: neo-conservatism and fundamentalism of any kind (religious or otherwise), for example. Whether it’s based on a country or an “ism,” nationalism always contains that dangerous combination of blind fanaticism and a lack of concern for reality.

In nationalism, thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations… Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.” Moreover, its self-deception leads to catastrophic miscalculations based on delusions rather than facts. Orwell stated, foretelling the mental state of democrats today:

“Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.”

But to really appreciate Orwell and understand how he had our current foreign policy down pat, you only need to read this:

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

It was Georges Santayana who said “… those who refuse to remember the past, are condemned to relive it.”

Any of this sounds familiar?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

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Runaway Society

Hola Everybody,
Voting for the lesser of two evils is a logical fallacy called false dilemma. Voting for the lesser of two evils is not like choosing to switch a runaway train to another track so it kills one person instead of five if you do nothing. In this hypothetical case, there are only two choices. But when faced, as we are in this election cycle, with two of the most despised candidates in history, there are other choices. You can abstain from voting, for example, or vote for a third party candidate, or write someone in. 

If you aren’t fooled by the Democratic Party’s propaganda, you’ll see the real issue is not the lesser of two evils the evil of two lessers. Which choice is really the lesser evil? Evil is evil and leads to more evil.

Runaway Society

I don't give a damn about semi-radicals...
This is not a time of gentleness.
It is not a time of lukewarm beginnings.
It's a time for open speech and fearless thinking.
-- Helen Keller

Towards the end of Emile Zola’s Beast of Man, an engineer and a fireman are quarreling in the locomotive of a passenger train. In his rage, the fireman has stoked the engine’s fire into an inferno. They grab at each other’s throats, each trying to force the other through the open door. Losing their balance, both fall out and perish. The train rumbles on at breakneck speed. The passengers, soldiers en route to the war front, are sleeping or drunkenly unaware of the impending disaster.

Zola’s story has been seen as a parable of modern runaway societies. Those supposedly in charge, embroiled in their own personal dramas, paralyzed with performance anxiety, or caught up in their ambitions, have left the driver’s seat. Meanwhile we, their oblivious passengers, are about to pay the price.

A common neoliberal strategy is setting up government for failure and then blaming any failure, not on deregulation, but the very agencies they set up to fail. We ignore the fact that a gun endows people -- many unstable -- the power to inflict destruction like no other instrument. Sure pencils don’t cause people misspell words, but let me see how many people you can shred with one pencil as opposed to an assault weapon.

The genius of the neoliberal project lies in how its adherents have convinced us that a regressive rather than a progressive tax structure is better for us (they call it “tax relief”). It’s how they convinced a number of us to go along with trickle-down economics -- an economic theory no real economist has ever backed. Worst of all, is how neoliberals like Hillary Clinton have convinced many of us that nothing is possible -- that the best we can hope for is a platform that’s to the right of Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon.

In any case, our opinions are most often driven by the beliefs -- or better put: by the metaphors -- we live by. Neoliberals have known this for some time and that’s partly why you voted for Obama and why you vote against your own economic interests, or find some identification with a regressive politician such as Hillary Clinton. Neoliberal operatives discovered long ago that people vote their values, not on the issues. Therefore, if you can frame, say, “family values” in a way that serves the economic interests of the elites, you have co-opted the most important metaphor we all live by -- families.

Progressives have labored under the false notion that reason or issues should come first. Yes, issues are important, but people vote on values (frames) and if you can’t connect with people on values, you will never get your agenda on board. Let’s take the following facts as an example:

On the Iraq War, an overwhelming majority of Americans want a timetable for pulling out our troops. On economic policy, most Americans support stronger government regulations to protect citizens. On trade, polls consistently show the public is very suspicious of the free trade agreements that have hurt the middle class. On health care, surveys consistently show that about two-thirds of those asked desire a government-guaranteed universal health-insurance system -- even if that means higher taxes.

If the US electorate is more left of center, then why aren’t progressive issues on the table for public discourse? Why? One reason is because we longer live in a democracy -- we live in an oligarchy. Another reason is that these issues haven’t been framed adequately. One of the ways issues are framed is through repetition. Jon Stewart from The Daily Show has made a career highlighting hilarious video clips of the neoliberal noise machine using the same words over and over on the same day. This is a very effective way to express and embed an idea. The words come with frames of reference attached. Those frames in turn latch on to and activate deeper, subconscious frames. When repeated over and over, the words serve to reinforce deep frames by actually strengthening neural connections in listeners.

In that way, I can stand up on a stump and yell out catch phrases like “family values!” or (as Hillary did) yell, “superpredators!” or “tough on crime!” and immediately in your brain a barrage of neoliberal-framed issues appear. I can blurt out, “tax and spend” and immediately neoliberal frames come to your mind. “Tough on crime!” “Traditional marriage!” “Choice!” For the last 40 years, a vast media network of think tanks, newspapers, radio and TV shows have embedded these values into the mind of unsuspecting or apathetic Americans, creating a passive mindset. Shit, people in France, who are taking to the streets to fight for their equal share are wondering, “Have the Americans fallen asleep?” Sadly, we have, and the train is hurtling towards certain disaster... 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Black and Brown America and the Clintons

Hola mi Gente,

After steamrolling over Hillary Clinton in yesterday’s new Hampshire primary (he won almost every demographic including all women) Bernie Sanders is supposed to meet today with Reverend Al Sharpton in hopes of getting his support for his bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination.

In addition, Ta-Neshi Coates, who has been severely critical of Sanders because of his stance regarding reparations, announced today that he will be voting for Sanders. Stating that one could be critical of Sanders and still vote for him, he reluctantly admitted his preference for Sanders.

I can imagine that things are not too happy in the Clinton camp right now and I couldn’t be more excited that someone is actually putting up a real challenge to the corporate Democratic Party. I cannot endorse Sanders for several reasons, one being that I am a firm believer that the Democratic machinery cannot save itself from itself, but I would be lying if I didn’t tell you how excited I am to hear Sanders’ rhetoric and winning. His campaign has the feel of Occupy if the movement had decided to go the way of electoral politics. Something I was against and am not convinced it is a good thing.

* * *

Black America, Latin@s, and the Clintons

For the life of me, I do not understand Hillary Clinton’s popularity with African-Americans and Latin@s. Her positions (which apparently change according to the dictates of focus groups) and her husband's presidency was, when you examine the numbers, not very good for us. Let us put aside the bullshit concerns regarding “realism” and “electability” aside for just one moment and look at the hard facts:

Under the Clinton justice department, the black incarcerated population rose by more than 250,000. The Clinton years marked the greatest growth in black incarceration in U.S. History -- discounting slavery. It was the war on the drugs, initiated by Nixon and put on steroids during the Reagan administration, which ignited the flame. Under the Clintons, it became a full-on raging forest fire. The devastating impact of that on black families today, and on the economic viability of the black community in 2016 cannot be overstated.

At a time when we needed a so-called progressive to stand up to the racist stereotypes fueling America’s insatiable hunger to jail black and brown people, the Clintons instead capitulated and used the backs of Blacks and Latin@s to advance their political careers. Remember the coming of the black “superpredator”? The Central Park Five? The looming “epidemic of crack babies” born of sexually promiscuous black and Latin@ women giving birth to litters of future cop killers? You might think I am exaggerating, but these were the tropes that were used to step up efforts to incarcerate a whole generation of Black and Latin@ youth. The Clintons, confronted with an opportunity to stand on progressive principles, instead threw our people under the bus.

The federal welfare reform bill, The Personal responsibility and work Opportunity act, worked out between Bill Clinton and conservatives in Congress in 1996, has also left major lingering damage. A number of experts agree it has left “a gaping hole in the safety net for poor folks.” While the number of people in poverty fell by 6.4 million under Clinton, welfare reform led to a big spike in extreme poverty. In fact, some research shows (here) that the effects can be measured in lives lost.

In 1995, about 70 percent of poor families with children got cash assistance. By 2010, fewer than 30 percent did. And with federal entitlements gone, eligibility requirements in many states were tightened significantly. Only 11 percent of poor blacks lived in states with the least stringent programs. 63 percent were in areas with the toughest eligibility requirements.

The irony here being that, truth being stranger than fiction, her husband’s policies might have the unintended effect of her candidacy as we in Black and Latin@ communities forget the roots of modern day racialized social control and stand with a woman who advocated for the policies that helped create our situation. Watch here as Hillary does a full=throated endorsement of her husband’s crime bill:

In addition, her flip flops on immigration and her advocacy for more “secure borders” (code for anti-Mexican prejudice) and her support for TPP might be problematic for her Latin@ supporters. Oh yeah, let us not forget that it was Bill Clinton who signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and crafted the “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” policy for gays in the Military.

I could never, in all good conscience, vote for Hillary Clinton and feel good about it.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization… 

Notes to a Young Progressive

Hola mi Gente,

Did I mention of my commitment to post at least one blog post every day for a year? LOL I will be away upstate (Elmira Correctional Facility) on a prison monitoring visit for the rest of the week. So this commitment should get interesting… 

* * *

Nationalism vs. Patriotism

I call him a patriot who rebukes his country for its sins and does not excuse them.

-- Frederick Douglass

Patriotism is proud of a country’s virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country’s virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, ‘the greatest,’ but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is.

-- Sidney J. Harris

Many years ago, George Orwell wrote a prescient essay on the differences between nationalism and patriotism Orwell’s Notes on Nationalism, has as much relevance today as it did when it was written right before the lead up to WWII as nationalistic fervor fed the flames of Nazism and fascism.

Too many people-- in every country -- confuse nationalism for patriotism. When I listen to the nationalistic fervor stoked by the GOP clown car, especially Trumpf and Palin, for example, it is concerning because theirs is an appeal to fear to a white demographic feeling betrayed -- a population looking for any excuse to explode. The Trumpf/ GOP’s campaign strategy is to create “the other” as different and unpatriotic. It’s been a one-note effort mostly because U.S. conservatives apparently do not know any other strategy. 

Another reason conservatives use this tactic because it works: tar and feather a candidate by coming up with the scary face of a black killer. At one time that face was the face of Willie Horton. Today, it is any black kid with a hood. Dismiss people who dare question the wisdom of our current foreign policies as “unpatriotic.” Paint the opposition as effeminate and ineffectual and deride them for having the courage to speak out against wars that kill tens of thousands of innocent women and children. Tar and feather Obama as an uppity nigger (the nerve of a Harvard education!) who “pals around with “terrists.” While the preferred outcome is the same, the tactics are numerous.

And it continues to work. It is working partly because the failures of decades of lunatic conservative economic policies have created global financial meltdowns and eroded the middle class. It is working mostly because for the first time in a long time, a candidate with admittedly major flaws, has had the audacity to call rule by corporate proxy to be the moral question of the era.

Like Orwell, I view nationalism as patriotism’s ugly stepsister. Orwell defined patriotism as “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force upon other people.” I have no argument with this definition.

According to Orwell, nationalism is the tendency of identifying oneself with a single nation or an idea, and “placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” In other words, nationalism doesn’t have to be based on an allegiance to a particular nation. This same fanaticism can be applied to any “ism”: neo-conservatism and fundamentalism of any kind (religious or otherwise), for example. Whether it’s based on a country or an “ism,” nationalism always contains that dangerous combination of blind fanaticism and a lack of concern for reality.

In nationalism, thoughts “always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs and humiliations… Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.” Moreover, that self-deception leads to catastrophic miscalculations based on delusions rather than facts. Orwell stated:

“Political and military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.”

In other words, whatever happened to the widely held neocon assertion that the Iraqis would’ve greeted us as liberators and showered us with rose petals?

But to really appreciate Orwell and understand how he had our current foreign policy down pat you only need to read this:

“All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage -- torture, the use of hostages, forced labor, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians -- which does not change its moral color when committed by ‘our’ side.… The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

It was Georges Santayana who said “… those who refuse to remember the past, are condemned to relive it.” 

Any of this sounds familiar?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…