In Search of an Ideology

I often tell people that I hate ideology, but still, even as I rant against people who have the answers before they know the question, I know I'm not being completely honest with myself. Of course I have ideology. Of course I see things from my own perspective. We all do.

The only alternatives to ideology are to either to know nothing outside myself, or to have a direct line to universal truth. If I knew nothing outside myself, I'd be in Hollywood. I were to claim some corner on the market of absolute objectivity, I'd be putting myself in the same category as certain religious zealots, who claim only they understand revelation, and Ayn Rand's Objectivists, who claim that their rather extreme beliefs are the product of pure reason. These are the most ideological people of all. This claim on truth leads to self-righteousness. Their doctrinaire arrogance makes them the most dangerous of all people.

I am not a religious fundamentalist, and I don't believe that my ideas on how the world should be run are the only ideas that will work. I like them fine, but am willing to compromise. I may even change my mind from time to time. But I have moral beliefs, and I have ideas. So I must have some ideology. But what? The only way I can sketch out my personal system of beliefs and ideas is to look at others.

One person whose balance of thought and morality is John Maynard Keynes. Keynes is sometimes viewed as the savior of capitalism from the darkness of the Great Depression, and sometimes reviled as the harbinger of government dependency and (cue thunderclap) socialism. What I see in Keynes is a man who understood the dismal science of economics better than most, and wanted to reconcile it with the moral goals of civilization. I could say the same of other contemporaries of his, like Friedrich Hayek, but I don't share his moral interests. I care about the general welfare of citizens just a little more than I care about the freedom of individuals. He was just the opposite. From Keynes, I've found that I believe in a moral capitalism where governments work to reduce the natural inequalities of competition, and take some interest in things like industrial policy, a strong safetynet, and public-private collaboration for the greater good. Neither Keynes nor I would begrudge a person who grows rich from their work. We just believe that that no economic decision is made in a vacuum, that every dollar spent is a dollar someone else earns. We believe that every underpaid or unemployed worker is not just a consequence of the market at work, but is also now collecting tax-funded unemployment and Medicaid, while avoiding the purchases that go to another worker's paycheck.

Another personal hero is the recently departed playwright-dissident-turned-Czech-president-and-Nobel-laureate Vaclav Havel. In the essay, The Power of the Powerless, Havel describes the small actions that a greengrocer undertakes against the banality of oppression; the way that a shopkeeper might one day decide that the propaganda posters that come with the vegetable shipments don't need to go in his shop's window. Havel writes,

"Ideology is a specious way of relating to the world. It offers human beings the illusion of an identity, of dignity, and of morality while making it easier for them to part with them. As the repository of something suprapersonal and objective, it enables people to deceive their conscience and conceal their true position... It is an excuse that everyone can use, from the greengrocer, who conceals his fear of losing his job behind an alleged interest in the unification of the workers of the world, to the highest functionary, whose interest in staying in power can be cloaked in phrases about service to the working class."

Havel doesn't call on the masses to resist, and never claims to have the answers. He just describes the unwitting path that he and his friends and neighbors took towards being dissidents, the slow acceptance that his society is enervated by beliefs used to support a hollow, calcified, and oppressive hegemony. He simply describes the way that one argument over something silly could land someone (anyone) in jail. Havel never thought he'd be a leader. He just followed his beliefs, and did it in a way that worked well enough with others that he ended up at the vanguard of one of the major turning points of the twentieth century. It all started with a humble, humane demand for dignity and truth. It's the way that all revolutions ever since have started.

I still don't know what my ideology is. I don't think I'll ever be comfortable calling myself one -ist or another, though surely several are appropriate. Part of me gets some satisfaction out of thinking I'm above all that, but I'm not. And another part of me rejects that kind of satisfaction. That part just wants what's right. That's never easy to pin down, nor should it be.

The Nature of the Beast

I’ve long viewed public policy as philosophical kin to ecology. They’re both the science of tweaking complex systems, and both pose similar dilemmas for people who seek to alter the rules of the game.

I hate mosquitoes. It’s not enough that they leave me welted and itchy all summer; they carry diseases that contribute to the deaths of millions every year. It would be easy to say, “let’s kill the bastards,” throw some money at the problem, and drive them to whining, bloodsucking extinction. But what would the spiders, bats, and frogs eat? I may not like mosquitoes, but they matter to someone (or something). We need to look at the bigger picture. Will the other animals adapt to a mosquito-free world? Can we maybe just make mosquitoes leave us alone, or itch less? Can we go after the diseases they carry, and deal with the nuisance? My nuisance and pestilence is someone else’s bread-and-butter.

I also hate health insurance companies. Every year I find out that another $10-100 will be taken out of my paycheck to hand over to company whose profit model depends on not handing that money over to the doctors I see, who then must nickel-and-dime me so they can pay their own bills. It would be easy to hand the insurance companies’ responsibility over to the government and let them sort it out like they already do for old people on Medicare. It would be a lot cheaper. But what would the hundreds of thousands of people who work for the insurance companies do? What about all the people being paid to process claims at my doctor’s office? What about everyone who’s getting paid to keep the system just the way is? Couldn’t we make some more incremental changes? If cost is the real problem, aren’t there other solutions aside from a scorched earth policy on 16 percent of our economy? My expensive bureaucratic burden is lots of people’s livelihood.

The point is that personal, ideological, and political preferences don’t exist in a vacuum. Making changes to the supply of something (mosquitoes, health insurance) while ignoring the demand (frogs, workers), leads to massive imbalances and serious unintended consequences. In our system, a lot of the smaller, less interesting policy questions are handled with nuance and grace. But the bigger ones that people argue about over dinner, like taxation and the role of government, are not. The modern-day conservative notion of “starving the beast” of government has a clear goal in mind, but only looks at the supply side in achieving that goal. But you’re not starving the beast. You’re starving the taxpayer, and they vote. They say that if you take away the supply of funds (lower taxes), the demand for services will go away. But it doesn’t. Instead, people continue to demand the public goods they always have demanded, but finance it with the cheap debt that’s a byproduct of being the world’s currency. Instead, we end up in acrimonious debates about debt when all of us would rather be debating about what the government should and shouldn’t do.

If it is a conservative goal to limit government, one of the smartest things they can do is hand the public the tab. Instead, they hide it from the hungry public, but point out that their credit cards are maxing out. Only then can public demand for services match the supply of money to pay for it. If it’s a progressive goal to expand the role of government, the cost of doing so should be made clear. They hide the bill too, only they say that debt is cheap and limitless, so who cares?

Policy change must look at what sort of balance will be struck after the fact. Services do good, but they cost money. Cuts save money, but take away from the things people like. And debt helps us avoid making the real tradeoffs. In nature, cutting the food supply means that those who demand it will either look elsewhere or die.  In politics, cutting revenue means that we go into debt or default. In both cases, demand remains, at least until something cataclysmic disrupts it. It doesn’t take a treehugger to believe that.

They Really Hate Romney

Thousands of journalists and bloggers write about politics and political figures as if their insights were revelation, each seeking overlooked or understated views on this or that piece of contemporary trivia. Herman Cain is an alleged serial sexual harasser, but maybe there is a humanistic back story. Michelle Bachmann makes seriously outlandish and occasionally dangerous claims, but maybe she’s just being ironic like all the kids do these days. The youth vote is hot, after all. Those examples are fabrications; their only goal to describe the nature of the politics blog beast. What is really interesting is the front-runner.

But Romney’s narratives are almost always dry, policy-driven, predictable rehashings of his tendency to go where the wind blows. He was pro-choice before he was pro-life. He was pro-health-reform before he was pro-social-darwinism. The most personal criticism I’ve ever heard about the man is some legend about the Romney family strapping the (occupied) dog crate to the car roof when they went somewhere on vacation in 1983. In the runup to the 2008 elections, this was billed as “emotion-free crisis management.”  And I thought that “no-drama” Obama had the corner on that market.  

We know that Romney is winning the GOP nomination race despite anemic polling, uninspired, triumphalist campaigning, and a somewhat causal adherence to the doctrines of his doctrinaire political party. The Republican electorate hopes that someone, anyone, will present a serious challenge to Romney, and ultimately Obama. But time and again, the realities of a modern political campaign come calling on their latest cloying, saccharine flavor of the month. Inevitably, someone says something stupid, or some skeleton emerges from some closet, and the money and enthusiasm disappear without a trace. Again and again, they are resigned to the inevitability of a Romney candidacy.  

If I were emotionally engaged in who wins the GOP nomination, I’d be irate. After three years of (heavily subsidized) activism against a president in the opposing camp, after all the conservative talking heads spelling out the party message in no uncertain terms, and all the games of to-the-death-chicken on Capitol Hill, it comes down to this callow, glorified used car salesman in a Teflon suit and a weathervane for a moral compass. I’d be looking for anybody but this guy too. But there is no one else.

Last time I checked, the average GOP voter is highly motivated by ideology and emotion. People liked Ronald Reagan because he seemed like a nice guy with a sunny temperament and a knack for making strong statements against a cold war enemy that was already crumbling under its own weight. People liked George W Bush because he looked like their goofball high school buddy, even as he made them feel safe in a dangerous world. They hate Obama because he’s nothing like anyone they know, and, unless he is actively campaigning, comes off as a professorial and condescending.

For most people, finding a president they can get behind is not about policy. It’s about what you hear over lunch at work, what your friends and family say, or, if you’re civic-minded, what you see on the half-hour of nightly news you watch. And nobody likes Romney. He is stiff, phony, nakedly ambitious and opportunistic, occasionally nasty towards his opponents, over-privileged from birth, father to a Stepford family, and an owner of too-perfect hair. Every characteristic that makes the man a winner in life makes him a loser in presidential politics.

Too many bloggers and journalists obsess about Romney’s policy positions, and whether he is “conservative” enough for the modern GOP. Too many people take Rick Perry’s desire to abolish three cabinet-level federal agencies he couldn’t remember, or Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 tax plan as gospel, making anything Romney says sound reasonable and eminently presidential in reply.  But it’s not about policy any more than Boss Tweed passing out free beer at the polls, or Huey Long stoking the fires of depression-era Louisiana’s working poor. It’s about hitting certain emotional chords among people who might show up to vote in on an Iowa morning in the dead of winter. People who are cerebral enough to pay attention to this campaign in its early stages seem utterly deficient in their analysis of the emotional language driving these candidates. There is so much earnest analysis by people whose intuitions and inklings have grown atrophied by too many years of trying to be taken seriously by other serious people.

We all know that Romney is supported by the GOP establishment; a shadowy group whose sole motivation is to keep all their money and make much, much more. We mostly suspect that he will probably win this nomination by the grace of his powerful friends, and for lack of an alternative. But they all really do hate him, even his savvy and influential benefactors. None of this is revelation, but it’s important all the same.

A Monument Worth a Thousand Men

The Hebrew name “Gilad” means “monument” in English. What sort of monument is worth trading over a thousand incarcerated men? What sort of man is worth a thousand others?

Monuments are symbols, and through this lopsided trade, Israel puts a largely symbolic issue to bed, and Israeli leaders get to claim credit. Hamas scores a great victory for the time-honored strategy of holding a symbol hostage, and its leaders are emboldened across the Palestinian territories. On its face, that’s all there is to it. But I suspect there’s much more.

First, consider the current Israeli government’s position. Social upheaval that has little to do with Palestine has threatened to upend its fragile coalition of callous warmongers and religious zealots. International pressure has been mounting at the United Nations to recognize a Palestinian state, define the borders, and end the fighting, thus ending a status quo that has had over 40 years to cultivate beneficiaries in government, the military, and civil society, including about 500,000 armed and increasingly radicalized settlers on Palestinian land.

Then, consider Hamas’s position. Persecuted in the West Bank, mostly exiled to blockaded Gaza, Hamas has lost all of its clout, while its rival Fatah has been at the international negotiating table talking deals it neither likes nor can take credit for. The unending isolation of blockade has worn down Gazan morale, and weakened Hamas’s ability to effectively run its schools, hospitals, and police to tamp down fringe elements. Its own callous warmongers and religious zealots grow restless. Their one saving grace is the hostage they’ve held for over 5 years, and the massive political upside potential of a thousand freed brothers in arms from his release.   

So an exchange happens. Fractious Israel gets a symbolic victory that unites the nation behind the one institution they hold in common—the military. Waning Hamas uses overt hardball tactics to free a thousand men, many of whom are considered heroes of the resistance back home even as they served multiple life sentences for terrorist acts.

Wherever you stand on these matters, the thousand-to-one trade is fairer, and more cynical, than the world gives credit. The point is not to look at the three orders of magnitude between one soldier and a thousand prisoners. Look instead at the brokers of the deal, and what they stand to benefit.

Hamas’s position is easier to understand. A thousand men for one symbol in captivity. Its most promising leaders, long incarcerated, now free to fight for the cause. Compare a thousand liberated warriors, many of whom are famous, to Fatah’s symbolic overture towards the UN. Hamas gets results. Fatah’s technocrats look ineffectual. Hamas is enjoying a revival of proportions that were unimaginable a month ago. Marwan Barghouti, often described as Palestine’s Mandela, now walks free. He's part of ongoing negotiations with Fatah.

Israel’s position is more complex. First, forget about whether you think there ought to be a peace deal and what its terms should be. This isn’t about getting closer to a peace deal. It’s about holding out for the best possible price. Ever since Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, Israel has endured a few rockets on an immigrant town in the desert in exchange for building thousands of new homes on occupied territory. Hamas was relegated to Gaza, while Fatah operates in the West Bank, effectively splitting the Palestinian cause, and a peace deal is no closer than it was when Sharon took office in 2001. That’s ten years of continued policy in exchange for one miserable strip of land that nobody wanted anyway.  

Giving Hamas what it wanted means that Israel no longer has to change. Israeli public opinion feels good about brining one of their boys home, and there’s an election next year. Its negotiating partner for peace suddenly has a radical internal rival to contend with. Soon enough, the terrorism will start again, and Israelis will forget about economic inequality and labor strikes.  For Israel, an enemy flush with victory is one you can fight with a moral authority the world recognizes. And the settlements will continue to grow.

If all goes as planned, and this moment propels Hamas’s warmongers and religious zealots into action, then nothing new will get done. More attacks on Israeli civilians mean more justifiable repression and retribution. It will be another ten years before negotiations are talked about, and meanwhile, the settlements will continue to grow.

The only way out is if Hamas embraces non-violent agitation. A thousand freed men is a real victory. Let’s hope one of them is someone the world will build monuments for.

Time for the Inside Game

Let's get real.

Protests will give a movement credibility and clout, but they're hard to do when the weather's bad.  Deny it, but winter in the States ain't a river in Egypt. Can you imagine occupying Wall Street in January, when the wind chill between the Lower Manhattan skyscrapers reaches polar proportions? Not so much. Maybe Occupy LA will have better luck. I say protest while the weather's good, but now is the time to make plans for the "inside game." Here are two thoughts:

1. For a while now, I've been ranting into the ether about how the working guy needs an association, just like retired people have the AARP, and people in the egg industry have the American Egg Board. Associations are how things get done today. Good thing someone's thought of it.

In a time where labor demand is highly dynamic and easily subsitutable by "inputs" from elsewhere, labor needs to look beyond unions. We cannot reasonably expect people who hold temp jobs at the mall during the day, and make ends meet delivering pizza at night to join a union. But those are the very people who need representation in Washington and their own state capitals the most.

Working America is (surprise surprise) an association for people who work. Its ranks have swelled in recent weeks with the sudden attention to working people. It's the AFL/CIO's attempt to reach out to the non-unionized workforce. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's a good vehicle for organizing people away from the reams of labor law and regulation, the oversight of (and cooptation by) management, and the confines of calcified union rules.

2. A second part of the inside game will be in making changes to the system that we can agree on as a nation, thereby broadening the appeal of the movement to include people with different politics, but similar interests. In my last post I spoke about "a constitutional amendment to shore up our democracy, reduce the influence of powerful interests, free candidates from their parties, encourage greater participation in civil society, and ensure that everyone who can vote has the chance to do so." A constitutional amendment push demands high levels of activism in both state and federal government. Organizing for such an end could have tremendous secondary effects.  

Many, if not most of us can agree that our voices, conservative, liberal, whig, no-nothing, and know-it-all, have been muted by those with unfathomable money and influence. As I mentioned before, there is a collaborative effort with a Harvard ethics professor and a Tea Party leader to start thinking about constitutional changes that would benefit us all.


There is also Get Money Out; a group dedicated to making an amendment happen, complete with membership, verbage, and its own lobbyists. Sign up, if that's your thing.


Fall is here, and winter's not far behind. Time to get your (inside) game on!

How to Get 99 Percent of Us to Agree

The Occupy Wall Street movement and its analogues across the country tell us that they represent the 99 percent of this country who aren’t plutocrats in control of greatly outsized wealth and power. I believe them. I think I’m one of them. I just don’t agree with every placard raised, or all the manifestos in circulation. Really, I don’t really agree with any of that stuff much beyond the limbic satisfaction that comes from rooting for the home team. Others agree far less.

Placards and manifestoes are fine in their own way. Slogans and statements are things that people can coalesce around, ideas that harmonize the necessary chaos of individuality. But the world is too complex to adopt slogans as policy. Tradeoffs abound. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Single payer health care tomorrow means millions of insurance company employees out of work today. No nuclear means more coal. Immigration reform probably means punishing some people, and letting others break the law for the greater good.

At some point in its early stages, every mass movement must strike some balance between the general and the specific. A 36-point declaration will put people off right away, and empty sloganeering will cause a slow erosion of support. And yet, to influence the world you need lots of people agreeing on at least a few things. To get lots of people agreeing on things, they have to be clear and simple. But “clear” and “simple” are kissing cousins to “rigid” and “obtuse.” When they are rigid and obtuse, they can have disastrous consequences. Consider the famine and hardship that arose out of China’s Great Leap Forward, or the endlessly unproductive War on Drugs.  

The good news is that there is a solution to this dilemma. It’s called democracy. There’s something we can all agree on. I don’t know about 99 percent, but certainly 80 percent of us feel that there is too much money in our political system. Some of us feel that corporate money threatens to bankrupt our government through overpayment on things like Medicare and defense. Some of us feel that corporate money strips away the basic protections that labor has fought so hard for. Most of us are tired of the limited choices on offer at election day. All of us want something big to change.

We may not agree on the specifics, but democracy is the common thread between people who show up at Tea Party rallies, and those now showing up on Wall Street. We all feel like it’s being taken away from us by money. We disagree on why, but we all feel like we are not in a fair fight, that our work is increasingly fruitless, and that nobody on top gives a damn. Most of us would prefer to fight out our differences in the squared circle established by the founders of our nation, not in some Tahrir Square moment of absolute upheaval.



Consider This

My proposal: A constitutional amendment to shore up our democracy, reduce the influence of powerful interests, free candidates from their parties, encourage greater participation in civil society, and ensure that everyone who can vote has the chance to do so. But those are just my ideas. It would be important to have representatives from across the political spectrum hash something out. A thoughtful amendment movement could circumvent many of the ideological and cultural battles we are so embroiled in; a good first step towards bringing diverse opinions together to work towards the common good for a change. A Harvard ethics professor and a major figure in the Tea Party have already started to lay the groundwork.

We will always disagree, but this amendment is not about picking winners and losers, at least not for 99 percent of us. It doesn’t say who is right or wrong about global warming or gun rights. It changes the rules of the game so that all might benefit. More practically, a constitutional amendment would require intense, bipartisan political pressure on the House and Senate, a mass effort in all 50 state legislatures to ratify the amendment, and could create a structure for launching new political parties and coalitions at all levels of government. It could reinforce our belief in the American system right when we need it most.

(fat)Cat and Mouse

The typical Tom and Jerry episode is a string of of tit-for-tat vollies where Tom tries to flush Jerry out of his hole in the wall using any number of tricks. There's usually a moment of trepidation when Jerry's life hangs in the balance. Then, by some act of hubris, Tom ends up burned, beaten, or bruised, and Jerry has his deservedly smug moment of glory. Finally, the credits roll by and Tom and Jerry are followed up by Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner, Sylvester and Tweety, or Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. Each episode leaves the viewer with the assurance that no one was really hurt, but that what they just saw was just one battle in an endless war.

Some of earliest memories for millions of us are of these cat-and-mouse allegories, absorbed on the TV screen with bug-eyed abandon, and washed down with a bowl of Corn Flakes. I am positive that the hours I spent enrapt with these cartoon shorts are at least an order of magnitude greater than the time I devoted to long division or cursive writing. But it's only now that I am beginning to appreciate the lessons they taught. 

What are those lessons?

1. The small guy is nimble and unpredictable.
2. The big guy takes his strength for granted and makes amateurish mistakes.
3. The small guy can be both irritating and a sympathetic character.
4. You can feel bad for the big guy even if you don't want the small guy to lose.
5. Sometimes, often when there's a mutual enemy, they can be friends.
6. Both sides usually have a point, often an existential one.
7. The fight is because they are cats and mice. 
8. The fight is never-ending.

All of the talk of Class Warfare keeps bringing me back to the lessons I learned in front of the TV on Saturday mornings (and Sundays, and most days after school). The Class Warfare declaration is as silly as telling Tom and Jerry not to try to kill each other. As long as there are cats and mice, there will be conflict, sometimes even life-and-death ones.

The essential truth is that cats eat mice, while mice just want some cheese. The core nature of the big guys and the little guys dictates that there will be conflict so long as the two inhabit the same space. It's not a perfect metaphor. Mice would do fine without the cats around, whereas labor would have nowhere to work without capital. But the idea that there are separate, often opposing interests arising out of their positions in the pecking order, seems iron-clad to me. What's good for capital isn't always good for labor, and vice-versa.

The power balance and the necessary trade-offs between capital and labor are always shifting, but the battle continues. Maybe all that TV ruined my imagination, but I can't picture a future where there are no more cats and mice, where all of our interests are harmonized under one ethic or another. There may be an ebb and flow to the tensions, but the game of cat-and-mouse will always be with us.

The good news is we are real people, not cartoon animals. We can see beyond our naked self-interest. We don't need to kill if we're reasonable. Somehow, despite our conflicting needs, we have made enormous progress in labor, wealth, rights, and markets. Life does get better. But it is only through our own version of cat-and-mouse that it does. Game on.

          

Occupy Wall Street: The Proletariat Cometh?

A couple weeks ago I wrote that the Occupy Wall Street protests would never go anywhere if it remained the province of a bunch of college kids. Now there's talk of several of the big New York labor unions showing up in solidarity. Other "Occupy" groups are forming in Chicago, Los Angeles, and places as far afield as Manchester, England. Events across the world are coordinated via a website called Occupy Together. An anonymous group started a twitter feed to occupy the Johannesburg stock exchange. A group in Florida wants to occupy several states in the city on November 5 with a Guy Fawkes Day protest. Radiohead is supposed to play Wall Street today. (update: no, they're not playing.)

Hacktivists are organizing people around social media, connecting disparate groups, creating new rules of interaction as they go. Nobody is quite sure what this movement stands for, but that's all right. An emotional energy is coalescing on new lines. There is no manifesto. It has a life of its own.

I don't know if the Occupy Movement will amount to any real change, or if it is just the flavor of the month for a frustrated people. Nobody does. But for the first time since this made the news, it seems newsworthy. Right now it's just a little beyond the "dog bites man" story of college kids protesting. It's still far from the critical mass that a mass movement must achieve, but there's something to it. Something coherent but still unknown, something timely and long overdue.

College kids: you have my attention now.

Moral Confusion

Last night, after endless appeals, delays, and last-minute please, the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis. Mr. Davis was convicted of murdering Mark MacPhail, an off-duty Savannah police officer in 1989, with nine eyewitnesses attesting to his guilt. As time passed, seven of those nine recanted their testimony, many claiming coercion by the Savannah police into naming Mr. Davis.

Last night, after about a decade on Death Row, Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed for killing James Byrd, Jr. in 1998 by dragging the man behind his pickup truck with a 24-foot chain. Brewer was widely known as active in white supremacist groups, and DNA tests concluded that Mr. Byrd’s blood was present on Brewer’s clothes the following day.  

Two executions, held on the same night, in many ways mirror images of one another, had me thinking as I lay in bed this morning. There was no way I could make sense of these tandem punishments, meted out so randomly, at the will of individual judges, juries, and witnesses. How can we be sure that someone deserves death? Why does either victim’s family need someone else to die in their name?

I am not pious enough about the sanctity of life to believe that death is too steep a punishment for some particularly evil people. But for something so ultimately binary, so utterly irreversible, I want the explanations for why it should happen to be equally unequivocal, and completely irrefutable. I do not think that human perception or human justice is really capable of doing this the right way every time. None of us are above our motives and urges.

We all think we know who is good and who is evil. We try earnestly to build wise institutions for formalizing this knowledge. But whether it is life, death, or parole, we fool ourselves into thinking that true justice can ever come from a court. No grieving family has the right to act out their callow need for vengeance through the state. Vindication for the innocent never comes from a judge’s gavel, but from the judgment of other living people, and the historians who later study dusty, faded accounts. Maybe it only comes from God.

Two executions on the same night. Two stories that couldn’t be more different. Four families, each walking away from the execution chamber with their own mixes of relief, anger, sadness, righteousness, indignation, pride, hope, and despair.  Did anybody living this morning get what they wanted out of these executions? Maybe. But did they deserve what they got?

Call Me When the Proletariat Arrives

This week's non-story is about the hundreds of college kids who have decided to occupy Wall Street (or nearby) in homage to Tahrir square or Syria, or London, or whatever. Thoughtful quotes from freshmen at Hampton and Colgate permeate the two or three stories that made the latter pages of the world's news. Nobody was hurt. A lot of clever signs were raised. Nothing was broken. Drums were beaten on. A few people have been arrested for wearing masks.

But I want this to become a real story. Like perhaps most people, I want this to catch fire. I just don't know how.

As long as such civil disobedience is relegated to the liberal-arts set, I don't see it picking up much traction. And yet, for better or worse, college campuses have always been homes to revolutionary thinking. Nobody else has the time, freedom of thought, or stake in the future to challenge the way things are. Mass movements out of Teheran, Prague, Mexico City, Paris, Berkeley, and Cairo all provide good examples. But for each of those examples are countless other protests that fizzled into a whiny whimper. The 90s anti-globalization movement is a good example of something heady and abstract that never made sense to most people. The Battle in Seattle was a revolutionary moment for a few anarchists, and a pointless riot for everyone else.

But this isn't an intellectual debate like globalization. There are a set of basic issues that matter to the college kids as much as they matter to the working stiff. Kids are coming out of school with massive debt and no prospect of paying it off with a good-paying job. In a larger sense, we are all indentured servants to the banks who call Wall Street home. Fundamentally, people need to find ways to live well without the need to accumulate crushing liabilities. In other words, unless we are all right with our standard of living and economic opportunity averaging somewhere between Peru's and Albania's, we need to make America a better place to live and work. We need everyday people to to start profiting from economic growth, not just the handful of sharp-beaked, cold eagle-eyed investors perched in their plush leather nests high above the Street.

Where is the critical mass this time? The difference between a mass movement and a bunch of rich kids carrying signs is easy to describe in retrospect. Energy builds, a spark jumps a gap from campus to the cable guy, and everything changes almost overnight. But how? What's made the difference in the past? What might make the difference now?

The doctrine of socialism, with its appeal to class interest across borders and races, has helped the process along in certain instances. Other unifying forces, like religion, have contributed elsewhere. A galvanizing event, like war or economic collapse can unite people, but may also divide them. There's probably no easy pattern. Union Square is not Tahrir Square is not Tianenmen Square. Religion in some places is intensely divisive, many places have employed unimaginably brutal repression, while class is a non-starter here. In the end, every case is different. Every outcome varies with the players and their stakes in the game. Something might happen out of this, but I doubt it. But some unifying factor has to emerge.

Stuff is bad, and not just for college kids. It's bad for working families too. But somehow we don't see the problems in a mutually identifiable way. We are all keenly aware of something vaguely malevolent, something predatorial, hiding just out of site. The requisite level of energy has been building for some time; it's just that our complaints have remained largely parochial. Nobody has a truly national view of things. What is our unifying factor? How can we capture all our grievances in a sentence?

We're all struggling with debt while we watch our chances at a decent living go down the toilet. We're all bearing witness to our public assets' and our national pride's slow erosion. Everyone knows that a few predators lurk in the shadows of industry. But it's one thing to tell everyone on Facebook to show up in Lower Manhattan with a tent. It's another to really organize something. What is the message? What is the medium? This isn't Cairo. It's getting cold in New York, and besides, who has time to camp out?

I'd really like it if we all found some way of demanding that this economy starts working for all of us. Many people share that stultifying sense that mysterious forces circle high above our heads, taking what they wish, leaving the rest of us to scurry for shelter. Many, many of us, across the political and cultural spectrum feel these things. We should all be rooting for these kids, ridiculous as they may seem. It's these kids who can really start something.

For me, the moment the kids can get a decent turnout for high school-educated Wal-Mart cashiers, unemployed middle managers, returning vets, and maybe a few pensioners, they'll have a movement I can get behind. But until then, they have buried news story I'll ignore, just like everybody else.

We Are All John Henry Now

I was a little kid when I first heard about John Henry, the steel-driving man from the Tennessee hills who defeated a steam-powered machine in a competition to lay track for a railroad through the Smoky Mountains. I knew I was supposed to root for John Henry, and it was easy. He was strong, unafraid, and above all, a person in competition with a cold machine.  

But even as a kid, the futility of John Henry’s mission was obvious. He may have won that track laying race, scattering that machine’s parts over the hills in a steam cloud, but he died of exhaustion. And he was the strongest steel-driving man in those parts, going up against what was surely an early steam engine model. Imagine the second model the engineers came up with, or the tenth. Meanwhile, there is still no second model of men. We are all Homo Sapiens Version 1.0.

John Henry’s story is an allegory of noble defiance against the indifferent machinations of progress. The back story is that our inventive, dynamic species will one day become the victim of its own success, outmoded in the end by its own creation. As a kid, watching the Jetsons, hearing about robots that built cars, and thinking about the endless future ahead of me, a voice in my mind quietly wondered, “… then what are we going to do?”

The notion of machines ending our way of life isn’t unique to John Henry’s story. The Terminator, Star Trek’s Borg Collective, Battlestar Galactica, and several other lesser deities of the sci-fi pantheon have all captured the foreknowledge that surely, some day, machines will be able to do everything we do, and do it better. Each of those stories conjures up a superior species of our own making— plausible, but always just beyond our abilities, safely in the realm of the fantastic. When it comes to plausible myth, John Connor has nothing on John Henry. Only John Henry tells the story of our loss to amoral, rational economic productivity. Only John Henry dares to tell the story of loss as it really is. I see John Henry making the stand that we all might have to make one day.

To be sure, I am well aware of the advances in our standard of living we all enjoy from the process of productivity gains. There is no way my toaster would cost $40 if it were made by an apprenticed craftsman instead of an assembly line of semi-skilled workers. There is no way I could expect to live a long life in comfort if this were still an age of human and animal toil alone.

But McDonalds cashiers are being replaced with iPads. Computers can now take sports statistics and put together well-written news articles. Lawyers now use software to mine documents for evidence instead of employing armies of associates and paralegals in the task. What will they do?

Technology continues to advance at logarithmic rates, even as we lumber ahead the same as always, hoping our own jobs aren’t next. Short of pulling the plug, I don’t see any way we can win this game. The steam engine howls for us all. If you can’t beat ‘em, the only option is to join ‘em. But we'll be all right. Homo Sapiens Version 2.0, here we come.  

The Legend of John Henry's Hammer,

Johnny Cash, live from Folsom Prison.

"John Henry said, I feed four little brothers,
And baby sister's walking on her knees.
Did the lord say that machines aughtta take the place of living?
And what's a substitute for bread and beans? (I ain’t seen it)
Do engines get rewarded for their steam?"

The Dumb Trap

There’s a lot of talk out there today about whether Rick Perry is dumb or not. After all, the guy got Cs and Ds in college, ignores science, and doesn’t seem to care about learning anything new. All of this is not only beside the point—it’s a classical fool’s trap. Why? Because in politics we’re not measuring IQ points, SAT scores, US News college rankings, arugula consumption or any other effete virtue. We’re measuring votes and popularity.

We’re measuring how people feel about a candidate. On election day, no matter how we arrive at the polls, we all ask the same questions. “Do I like the guy?” “Do I trust him?” “Does what he says make sense to me?” Our differences are in how we arrive at the desire to vote for one person over another, or whether to vote at all. Some of us ask things like, “Is he rational?” or “Is he a good critical thinker?” and others ask, “Does he share my values?” or “Will he stand up for people like me?” All of these are good questions, but different people will prioritize them differently. A successful candidate will answer them all to the satisfaction of the majority.

I don’t want a dummy in office. I also don’t want someone who’s callous, craven or capricious. I don’t want a sanctimonious moralizer for president, but I also don’t want a Mr. Spock technocrat. But if we just write a candidate off as dumb, we cede all authority to analyze whether we share his values or challenge is ideas and actions. We give him a massive inborn advantage, absolving him of responsibility and freeing him to gladhand and dazzle the very people with the most to lose by his policies, all because he seems to respect people like them and speaks in ways that make sense.

Too often I hear people say, “he appeals to idiots,” putting aside the fact that those “idiots” all have the same rights and privileges as we do as citizens of this country, that they have real grievances, are entitled to their opinions, and ultimately will vote for one person over another. I don’t care if they’re idiots, and even if I did, shouldn’t it be easier, not harder, to convince them we’re right? How smart is my side if we can’t even talk to people in ways that make sense to them? How can you be so interested in improving the lot of the average working guy and not start with at least a modicum of respect.

The things I have make me privileged, but I know it’s not easy to make ends meet on a high school education, or to come up poor in a rust belt town. More important, I know people don’t want to hear it from me. Luckily, it’s not about me, where I was born, or what I know. George W Bush proved that. So did Obama. It’s in how I communicate. People want some inspiration, some sense of optimism, some basic humanity, some way to identify with a stranger.

A little empathy and humility is often so well-received that it’s shocking that the ivory tower set hasn’t figured it out yet. Even after Reagan and Bush, these brilliant professors scratch their heads in puzzlement, searching the literature for answers when all they need to do is look in the mirror.

American government is designed to give a powerful voice to people outside of the rarefied cosmopolitan settings that typically govern other countries. People at the rural margins have much more power in the American system than anywhere else in the world. The Senate assures that Wyoming has the same vote as New York in one branch of government. The Electoral College means we elect presidents largely by winner-takes-all measures of state delegates, rather than by national popular vote. Culturally, we have no history of noblesse oblige, and no old world class structure.  We will not be governed by our “betters.” More than anywhere else, if you want to win in American politics you must be of the people, and not just for the people.

Meanwhile, cultural snobbery is real. People of my background are all guilty of it, and it’s getting worse. Every disparaging comment about how “the white trash,” or “flyover country” is ignorant or immoral only widens the divide between us as Americans with a common fate. There’s something wrong when people care about a stranger’s employment prospects or insurance status but resent who they are individuals who are into QVC or NASCAR.

Like it or not, this is your country. If you want to make it a better place for people to live, you must first be able to actually talk to them. For all his weaknesses as a candidate, Rick Perry is really, really good at that. It’s time to step up our game. Way, way past time, actually.

A Hypersonic Glider? Really?!

Let's review.

First, the big geopolitical picture. We're bogged down in two-and-a-half major asymmetrical wars and perhaps a half dozen minor ones against medieval-to-mid-century forces located in caves and patches of desert across the Arabic-speaking world. The last major army to pose any threat to us disbanded twenty years ago, and all comers are either blockaded or don't bother with all the blood and treasure when there is money to be made selling us stuff.

Second, the local political picture. We're bogged down in nasty asymmetrical fight over how this country spends money. On the table right now are trillions in cuts to discretionary spending, military spending, and mandatory spending on things like Medicare and Social Security. We are seriously looking at cutting old people's health care and retirement plans, education funds, underfunding infrastructure, and putting military cost savings on personnel and their families instead of the big, influential companies that sell us pointless, expensive stuff like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that is projected to cost literally a trillion dollars to operate over 30 years.

Third, the tactical-strategic picture. I'm no military expert, but I'm pretty good at Risk. One thing I know is that if you have massive forces all over the world, you can respond to threats quickly and decisively. It means that, as long as you don't stretch yourself out too thin, you've won the Game of World Domination. We have bases and troop presence all over the world. Between Japan, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Europe, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Djbouti, Oman, and dozens of others, we have the world covered.

In comes the Hypersonic Glider. The plan for this military investment is to be able to strike anywhere in the world from the Continental United States within an hour. It's an unmanned plane capable of achieving Mach 20 outside of the atmosphere, and plunging with great accuracy into any unwitting target on Earth.  As far as I can tell, this has been a goal of ours since the Khrushchev Administration. As of yesterday, its latest iteration disintegrated at high velocity twice in tests. Maybe it's trying to tell us something.

Here's why this bugs me.

Getting stuff into orbit has become fairly routine and affordable. Objects in orbit travel at Mach 25 (25 percent faster than Mach 20), can stay there for years, and can de-orbited into the Lap of the Enemy on fairly short notice. If you want to get fancy about it, the military has successfully launched the X-37, a fully-automated launch vehicle that can stay in orbit for 270 days with significant adjustments to its location, carry a payload that can fit in its roughly 1x2 meter cargo hold, and return to Earth in one piece. It takes 90 minutes to orbit the Earth at Mach 25. Why not make the X-37 a little bigger, and launch 4 or 8 of them, each with a few choice missiles on board, ready to rain down hellfire via ballistic trajectory on a half-hours' notice?

Don't like orbit? Well, we have bases all over the world and subsonic-to-supersonic cruise missiles ready to deliver 1500kg of horror on very short notice. We have 20 B-2 bombers that can go over 6000 nautical miles at just under Mach 1 carrying almost 50,000 kg at a time. Back of the envelope calculation: Bahrain Navy Base to Kabul, Afghanistan: 2000 km, or about 2 hours away on a B-2. One end of Afghanistan to the other is about 1200km. Oh, and we have had patrols flying the country end-to-end all the time for 10 years.

The whole point: Why on Earth do we need to be able to launch something from the Continental US to anywhere in the world within an hour? What does this get us that we don't already have already, or can't develop by modifying other experimental designs? Is there anyone with some sway over the Pentagon who is both skeptical and influential?

We need to cut the crap.

What marginal security to the American public does, say, $685 billion in military spending buy? How does that stack up to our cold war high of about $350 billion in today's dollars?

How about a modest cut of $100 billion a year from defense, like what's already been suggested and vetted? Imagine all the other things that $100 billion per year could buy.

How does our military budget compare to the $4 billion in international aid we spent in Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2010? Or the roughly $20 billion in aid worldwide? Or domestic education, where our federal investment totals about $70 billion a year? Or 1/8 of the roughly $800 billion in debt payments we'll owe annually in ten years?

Who's running this show anyway?

The Recession: A Different Way Out

Economies and ecosystems have a lot in common. Within certain bounds, both are self-correcting of their excesses and deficiencies, but there is a limit. After all, if all the mosquitoes disappeared from the jungle tomorrow, what would the frogs and spiders eat? The answer is that they wouldn’t, same as if all the home equity that was people’s cashflow disappeared.  

Why should a badly damaged economy spiral into control, and but never out of control? Is it not possible that past a certain threshold, we’re all toast? From what I read, these were common musings in the 1930s. One thing we learned then is that in the ecology of the economy, there are three big players. Buyers, sellers, and the government. If one is ill, then another can pick up the slack until they get better. The problem is that of the three moving parts of an economy, the sellers have been left out of this obligation. Why is it always up to consumers or the government to fix things?

By now everyone agrees that we’re not in your father’s recession. It’s more like your grandfather’s, or maybe your great-grandfather’s. Even with today’s competing political realities, nobody denies that there aren’t enough jobs, and therefore, not enough people with paychecks clamoring to buy what the world sells. As far as that goes, we are all Keynesians now. Where we differ is in the policy solutions to how to create demand.

Theory A: The government gives the sellers of things more money and fewer rules on how they spend it, and this will make buyers buy things.  The implication here is that sellers of things are waiting for their tax rates to come down before hiring a couple million Americans to make something that nobody is buying.

Theory B: The sellers of things have cash, and should be taxed by the government to create jobs for buyerswho will then be in a better position to buy things. If the politics are such that we can’t raise the money, then we should borrow it, because our credit is good, if nothing else, and in the long run we’re all dead anyway.  

There has to be another way of looking at things.

I know, I know, Theories A and B are highly reductive policy proposals generated out of competing moralities, global context, class struggles, and constituent groups, but that’s not the point here. The point is that both theories want to get more cash flowing through the system, by monkeying with the ecology between government, buyers and sellers. But the bigger point is that today there is no demand, and thus no reason to sell stuff.

But there is still cash, lots of it in fact. Companies have been sitting on cash reserves for years, waiting for a perfect time to make profitable investments. The problem is if everybody waits, then that perfect time never arrives. With a clear lack of demand, and no reason for any one company to take the risk of a big investment in this economy, who’s hiring? There’s a clear lack of will for more deficit spending; that someone isn’t the government, but that’s all right. Why does it have to be? To sum up:

• Because of past needs, personal, and political decisions, both everyday people and the government are in debt up to their eyeballs.
• Because people have lots of debt and not enough cash from their jobs, it’s a bad time to be selling things.
• Because it’s a bad time to be selling things, the sellers aren’t hiring.
• Because the sellers aren't hiring, it's a bad time to be selling things.
• The government doesn’t have or won’t spend the money to change this.
• The sellers of things have the money but don’t want to spend it, and nobody is making them.

Am I missing something?

Someone’s going to get coerced, and as the little guy, I’m tired of being the one. I’m tired of being told to buy stuff, even as I don’t get paid more. I’m tired of credit card offers trading personal debt for a decent wage. I’m tired of my spending being the basis of the economy when nobody wants to actually pay me.

Make other people spend their money for a change. The government’s spent all of theirs to the point of huge debt. Consumers have spent all of theirs to the point of huge debt. Only one group is left with any money—the sellers of things. Why bother with exhausted governments and consumers when this crucial piece of the puzzle is sitting pretty?

How about leveraging a little government cash for a whole lot of private infrastructure spending (aka the Infrastructure Bank bill)? Why not insist that cash reserves be spent on certain activities that are highly conducive to wage growth? How about making taxing reserves beyond a certain point, supplying small business insurance, or even having a global summit of the Fortune 500 companies and come up with some sort of pact?

In the end, I don’t really know what to do. I leave it to the policy wonks to find a way to induce companies to spend, but ultimately it will take a new way of thinking about the roles of each of the creatures in our economic ecosystem. I don't care who gets the credit, but something has to change.

A Political Episode of 24

Hey Democrats: Relax. The clock was ticking. A nuclear default drew ever closer and you were caught in the middle of a zero-sum economic hijacking by zealots. But you came out with a trillion dollars in defense cuts, no cuts to the social programs you like, and tax increases with decent political cover; either out of the debt commission, or the expiration of Bush’s before this president’s term expires. Taking a principled stand at the eleventh hour would have been the equivalent of taking down the airplane you’re on so the terrorists don’t hit the White House. People might call you a hero, but you’d be dead. Instead, the plane landed. To be glib, a few hapless passengers were killed, but this terrorist cell was neutralized. It’s ugly. Nobody is happy. There will be grief and lots of coulda-shoulda-woulda vacillation, but disaster was averted. Take a week off and prepare for the next episode.

Besides, “winning” in this situation would have meant a Democratic president with an underserved reputation as a spendthrift having successfully lobbied for tax increases. A tax increase is not a winning argument. Balancing the budget is. Changing the subject to jobs is. Standing up for some principles is. Even during the hostage situation, insurgents layed in wait, ready to label this president as a money-wasting, tax-increasing, arugula-loving commie. A rhetorical timebomb ticked away under Washington, muffled by the din in the Capitol. That bomb is now (somewhat) defused. We all wanted to win, but win what exactly? I'm happy with the damage averted. It's our pride that was wounded. 

Politics aside, the policy isn’t that bad. Look at what’s happened when other countries faced this predicament. Austerity panics such as this often lead to far more dramatic policy, and a long line of wreckage from Latin America to Japan. The $22 billion that is slated for removal from the FY ’12 budget is likely to have less than a 0.15 percent negative impact on America’s GDP. Stimulus it isn’t. Neither is it the sort of austerity that Britain’s tax increases and spending cuts now impose on its citizens in the name of thrift.   

You may think that the politics of giving into the terrorists’ demands were bad. Imagine if that ticking bomb hadn’t been defused. Imagine the radioactive mess of a Democratic tax increase on top of all the other poor economic news. I can live with the substance. I only wish they’d come out swinging harder in tone and rhetoric. There are other zealots ready for the next salvo, now emboldened by having had their demands met, at least in public perception. Above the policy details, people want to know that their leaders are ready to stand up for them. I don’t get a good feeling out of this deal, but I don’t see how I would have if tax increases were a part of it. And feelings matter. It’s the message that failed.

Hey Democrats: Learn from this. Consider the root causes of this terrorism. Here, like there, we should look at ourselves. Sometimes I get the feeling that Democrats gaze into our heartland like naïve Marines who see only wild-eyed illiterate Taliban “bad guys,” rather than a troubled mass of humanity who are mostly trying to get by without the use of Kalashnikovs and RPGs; an overstretched, shell-shocked, and frustrated people who depend on the news and views of whoever chooses to lead them. All they need to do is learn the language and bring relief, but somehow this is lost on them.

The 2010 election cycle represented a true failure of imagination on the part of the Left, a real squandered opportunity. Instead of writing the Tea Party off as dumb rednecks, they could have seen them as voters, as families struggling to get by like everyone else. It’s not the GREs or the New York Times Crossword. It’s politics. More important, it’s people. Sure, many of them would never go along with a progressive view, but I am positive that some would if it actually was presented to them in plain language. Instead, progressives look like a highly sophisticated foreign force that is hell-bent on destroying people’s way of life. Progressives should sit down with the leaders of our heartland. They should shut up, listen, nod respectfully, and drink the tea when it’s served. Then they should make their offer.

It's been a decade of chaos for America, and what is the progressive position? I sure as hell know the conservative one-- it's shouted five times daily from every minaret in town. But what is its alternative? Like the unending wars we fight beyond our borders, we also pay a high price for domestic myopia. $2.1 trillion to be precise. 

Go Ahead, Default

No, not really. But part of me is tempted by the notion. Why? Because I have some real doubts about our political system's ability to resolve these problems on its own. The demands of creditors and the political realities of massive austerity could wake us up to the fact that the world's largest economy requires better stewardship, and that there is a dangerous ideology afoot, and it's not socialism. Here's what I mean:

National debt crises are political crises. The political crisis of debt often stems from logical flaws in capitalism and democracy.

First, capitalism. Employers are dependent on people buying what they sell, but at the same time, each employer would like to pay its employees as little as it can get away with. This works well as long as there's enough demand both for the goods the employer sells, and for the labor they require to make the goods. If demand for the goods slips, they lay off the labor that makes them. If they lay off the labor, nobody gets paid, and nobody buys the goods they sell. If nobody buys the goods they sell, they lay off more labor. Marx understood this. So did Henry Ford. That's exactly why he paid his workers twice the going rate-- so they would buy his Model T's. Thus, capitalism's priorities of low labor costs and high demand for what is on offer are in contradiction with one another and posing an inherent threat to itself.

Second, democracy. Politicians are in the business of negotiating their constituencies' priorities with other politicians. Anything else, like wise judgment, sacrifice, good will in negotiation, or moderation are moral considerations that are only adjudicated every few years in elections. Elections, especially when jerrymandering, 24 hour news, campaign finance, and irate fringe elements are involved, don't prioritize for moral leaders interested in the greater good. Even if they did, with endless cheap credit, there's little incentive for a politician to rein in the spending that people like, or to raise taxes to pay for it. Thomas Jefferson understood this. So does The Economist. Thus, democracy always runs the risk of spending too much, and taxing too little.

These are not original problems. What is original is that our democratic problems are magnified by the capitalists themselves, as opposed to the usual coterie of workers demanding rights and benefits, fascists demanding more fascism (which costs money), or generalized corruption that saps revenues, spending, and productivity.

Business interests have spent the past thirty years aligning themselves with America's right wing in order to free up money from labor, loosen regulations, and increase profits. This is nothing new in itself-- it's the success they've had. Business has been hugely successful in fostering political movements that demand policies which reduce federal regulation, depress wages, lower taxes, and spend greatly on agricultural subsidies, defense, pharmaceuticals and hundreds of other business interests that could use a check from Uncle Sam without a lot of strings attached.

Politicians have actually been elected to demand cuts to federal benefits, and industrial policy that supports profits above all else. A powerful group of House members will countencance nothing less without any bait-and-switch on their constituents-- this is just what they said they'd do. Vast sections of the middle class actually believe that cutting the money that props up their own spending power will somehow make all of us rich.

So here we are, cutting taxes and social spending at the threat of a total default on our nation's credit.
The people with money want to pay workers less. Understandable. 
They want to pay less in taxes. Who doesn't? 
They advocate to cut the subsidies to the very people who we need to spend money right now, and have convinced those people that doing so is the only way out of our mounting debts. Oh crap.

A crisis of capitalism is in an unholy marriage to a crisis of democracy.

The reptilian appetites of business for more money, and greater power have created an ideological monster. Business has created a movement that served its short-term interests very well, but represents a dangerous warping of our nation's priorities. This ideology is communism in reverse, and is as lopsided, power-driven and half-baked an idea as the imposition of such ideology was on the Soviet Union. Without its total defeat and utter discredit, this ideology will continue to erode our institutions and our nation's standing in the world. Economic ideologies, once they have gained traction in a political system, have never gone down without a disasterous fight. We're better off without them.

The healthy tensions of capital versus labor, spending versus austerity have been removed from the political equation. It's all capital, all austerity, all the time, even when all the evidence is that the working guy is suffering, and some spending can help get us back on track.

So I see three possibilities:

1. We we will cut ourselves into fewer government protections, less economic security, and a deeper recession.

2. We reach some middle ground where people can get back to work and continue to scrape by as they have for the past decade. Or...

3. We default and our creditors dictate the terms of repayment instead of our political system, the zealots are thrown out on their ears, and we can get back to rebuilding our nation.

Maybe that last one wouldn't be so bad after all.

NASA: Need Additional Space Aspirations

I was one of those kids who salivated at his particular interests. For me, it was space. My father used to tell dinner guests to "ask him anything about space," and I usually had the answer. I went to space camp. I ate astronaut ice cream and flew a space shuttle simulator. I had posters of rockets, and I launched the model kind on weekends. From about age five and well into adolescence, space was my Mecca. In many ways it remains so-- the ultimate aspiration for the human race.

I was in second grade when the Challenger exploded. That night I had a dream. Ronald Reagan was at the podium addressing the nation. He told us that America wouldn't return to space for the next 248 years (coincidentally, one Pluto year). I woke up in quiet mourning, and spent the day pouting over what I viewed as the loss of my life's central goal. But after a few days, I got over it.

In fifth grade, I saw the Discovery launch from a viewing area 5 miles off of Cape Canaveral. The anticipation of the countdown emanated from the RVs and pacing crowds around me. The ground shook mightily even from that distance, and a nearly blinding light grew under the red and white speck I'd been eyeing for what seemed forever. The roar of the craft filled the air as smoke billowed and grew into a tower that reached skyward, the tiny speck disappearing into the blue far above to the awe of everyone around me. It was one of the best days of my life. 

Since then, I've followed the US space program with varying degrees of attention. I've caught a few more shuttle launches on TV, and have felt the grandeur of the vessel slip into the routine, part of the background noise of history and public life. I've been around long enough to witness the space program's culture shift from one of fighter pilots and hard-nosed engineers, to overachieving PhDs and computer nerds who are more interested in piloting rovers and studying the geology of an obscure Jovian moon than they are in getting people up there. I felt a small pang of sadness when they rolled out a Space Shuttle replacement that looks like the Apollo craft of 50 years ago, only with half its lift capacity to orbit. I know we live in austere times, but it's sad to watch these personal and national dreams fade in memory.

With the Atlantis now in orbit for the last time, every comment on the mission is prefaced with "this is the last time that..." The last time the Solid Rocket Boosters will separate and land in the Atlantic. The last time a Shuttle reaches Main Engine Cutoff. The last International Space Station docking. The last Shuttle space walk. The last jettisoning of human waste. Well, that last one hasn't happened quite yet at least.

But this is so far from the end. New nations are sending people into space. Russian Soyuz craft make the trip far more routine than any Shuttle launch ever was. Private industry is building crew capsules and heavy lift rockets, and is already selling trips to suborbital space. A viable space plane was just commissioned by the European Space Agency. Someone is building an inflatable habitat that will one day become a hotel in orbit. Ion and plasma propulsion make realistic promises of trips to Mars in weeks rather than months. And NASA is still writing grants for all of this work.

At some point not far from now, space will become profitable. With enough capital and R&D, sending tourists aloft, launching satellites, and trillions of dollars in mining and energy are just some of the possibilities. Someone will figure out how to become a billionaire up there, and then many, many others will follow. We are nearing an age where public investments in the basic knowledge of how to achieve orbit will give way to private leveraging of capital for ambitious orbital, lunar, and interplanetary projects. NASA must continue to fund the basic science-- that is the necessary and legitimate province of the state. But it won't be on a NASA vehicle that I'll make it up there.

I am more optimistic than ever about our future in space. Public investment opens up new industries with massive profit potential. History tells us that when something becomes profitable, it usually grows orders of magnitude faster than anybody would have guessed. Space will happen, and it will happen quick. My only remaining fear is that I'll be too old to pay a visit to the Lunar Hilton. But I have the same hope as I ever did.

Chicken a la Debt

As the 4th of July holiday approaches, we should eat. We should also stop to celebrate the independence of our country from the tyrannies of the past. We should remind ourselves this weekend that Joint Stock Companies colluded with the Crown to extract resources and taxes from our nation's forebears without granting them any say in the matter. For too long, we ate what they served with no complaint. This holiday, we should also think of beer and barbecuing, which brings me to chicken (that's a segue).

There are two kinds of chicken on the menu this holiday weekend.

The first is Debt Default Chicken, perhaps more aptly served as beef, specifically bull. For this recipe, two cooks turn up the heat hoping that one side will be done before the other. This game of chicken should never be served as one side is inevitably charred, the other side nearly raw, and the whole thing will taste terrible, perhaps to the point of making us all gravely ill. Anyone who would play chicken with our nation's credit rating over an empty principle is a fool and should never be allowed near open fires.

The second is Flaming Base Chicken, a delicacy enjoyed by few where only the right wing is seasoned and prepared with loving attention, paying far less attention to juicy bits in the center, and ignoring the left side, which was just as important to the chicken as the right. Most people couldn't care less about the subtleties surrounding Flaming Base Chicken. They're just hungry. The only reason for this kind of chicken is because of a fear that the right wing will flap away without the chef. No cook for the barbecuing masses would ever recommend this exotic dish to a variety of tastebuds.

It's July 1 and I've had enough chicken already. Our leadership should never have allowed the festivities to carry on this long. Debt Default Chicken is such a mess that it could kill us, and leaders who resort to Flaming Base Chicken out of irrational or petty fear do not deserve the complements of the vast majority of the voting public who find right wings disagreeable or unimportant.

As we approach this holiday we should think about our representative democracy, where we leave the cooking to trusted experts, who must work in a large institutional setting and still cook well, but also healthy food that's palatable to most tastes. We should have no time for leaders who seek notoriety by stuffing people of similar tastes with their own fatty pleasures of endless tax cuts, throwing out the fresh vegetables in the face of spiraling debt, and shunning everyone else to cook for themselves, even as profits and obscene wealth are protected by the cooks as a matter of gustatory principle, while our nation's food bill is the lowest it's been over 50 years.
   
As we sit down for dinner, and tuck into the courses served to us by our leadership, the policies around revenues and spending, we should consider not whether this is the most amazing meal we've ever had, everything we ever desired, but rather whether we find it nourishing, the company pleasant, and the experience of eating these cooks' meals one worth repeating.

As we stop to think about the freedom we enjoy, we should look towards the modern-day collusion of wealthy interests with government to end all public benefit, like Medicaid for the poor, or not important to their bottom line in old age, like Medicare is for everyone else. We should question the wisdom of those chefs who tell us that this is the only way to prepare chicken, even as most of us find it repulsive. We should ask why we need to eat what they serve when there are so many other options.