A Glorious Fourth

 Old Times Not Forgotten

Who won the war? The Union Army obviously won the war... [but] if we're not just talking about the series of battles which finished with the surrender at Appomattox ; but talking instead about the struggle to make something higher and better out of the country -- then the question gets complicated: The slaves won the war, but they lost the war. Because they won 'freedom' -- that is, the removal of slavery -- but they did not win 'freedom' as they understood freedom.

I think what we need to remember most of all is that the Civil War is not over until we, today, have done our part in fighting it... William Faulkner said once that, "History is not was; it's is" -- and what we need to remember is that the Civil War is in the present, not just the past.

The generation that fought the war... also established a standard that will not mean anything until we have finished the work. You can say, "There's no more slavery any longer; we're all citizens." But if we're all citizens -- then we have a task to do to make sure that, too, is not a joke. If some citizens live in houses, and others live on the street, the Civil War is still to be fought -- and regrettably, it can still be lost.

Barbara J. Fields, Historian
In Ken Burns' Documentary, The Civil War, 1990

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Life, Liberty, And The Pursuit Of Happiness Means Exactly That

Quite A Day
Reuters:

Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing on behalf of the court, said that the hope of gay people intending to marry "is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."
...
In a dissenting opinion, conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision shows the court is a "threat to American democracy." The ruling "says that my ruler and the ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court," Scalia said.

Wasn't that true about the Citizens United decision, Tony? Of course, there's no comparison between allowing America's political system to be nakedly purchased by a wealthy elite, and recognizing that love, commitment and dignity deserve the protection of law. 

The New York Times online: 

“If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today’s decision,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
...
“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” Justice Scalia wrote of his colleague’s work. “Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.”

Poor 'Fat Tony' Scalia. Quite the ironic riposte from the architect behind the Bush v. Gore and 'Citizens United' decisions. But, mob bosses like Tony have never possessed much by way of humility or what was once referred to as "good sportsmanship". 

Go duck hunting with former President Dick Cheney, Tony, and let the rest of us get on with the business of real life.

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Liberté, égalité, fraternité

Rupert & Le Front National Ne Est Pas Charlie

 Marianne Statue, Place de la République, Paris, January 11 (Stephanie Mahe / Reuters)

This week, nineteen human beings died in the capital of a great European nation: twelve journalists and cartoonists, four hostages and three police officers (one of them, Ahmed Merabet, himself a Muslim), all murdered in Paris.

The attacks targeted artists in their offices and Jews in a kosher market. They were meant to create maximum public impact and fear.

Hours after the attack on the offices of Charlie Hedbo, Parisians spontaneously gathered in the streets -- more than thirty thousand of them around the statue of Marianne, the symbol of France, in Paris' Place de la République. Many held signs with the phrase: Je Suis Charlie -- I Am Charlie.  The next day, marches sprung up across the country -- tens of thousands in major cities across France.

JeSuisCharlie has become the most used hashtag in the relatively brief history of social media. 

Spontaneous Rally On January 8, Place de la République, Paris (Getty/via CNN)

A mass rally and march took place in Paris today, a memorial for the victims and an opportunity to reject beliefs which use violence and repression as their primary tool and creed -- and to affirm that tolerance, freedom of religious worship and the right to freedom of expression are what France and Europe stand for. 

1.5 million people showed up in the streets -- more than at any time since the city's liberation from nazi occupation in the summer of 1944.  Attendees marching arm-in-arm included the French, German, British, Turkish and Italian Prime Ministers, the Israeli Prime Minister and President of the Palestinians, and a host of other world leaders.

President Obama sent the outgoing U.S. Attorney General, Eric Holder.

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An intended byproduct of the Paris terror attacks was to increase tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims.  A heavy-handed response by the French government, an increase in casual discrimination against Muslims in the wake of the attacks, would be gifts to jihadists.

America's invasion of Iraq following the September 11th attacks allowed a simmering conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to explode into an endless, blood-feud war. The Israelis and Palestinians, and Hezbollah, have had five major confrontations after 2000. Arabic emigration to Europe increased; after the 2008 economic crash, the 'Arab Spring', with high unemployment and cuts in social services in EU countries -- a long string of events which contributed to the resurgence of Europe's nationalist, right-wing political parties.

The message of these parties sounds too familiar to many Europeans: Fear The Other. Radical Islam, the Rightists say, is an infestation, and any Muslim could be infected. They accuse the Left and Center political parties of being too politically correct, too weak to understand the threat, and to act. From the Netherlands to Greece, these parties are relatively small but growing -- only in France are they a serious political force; the National Front could actually take control of the government in the next election.

Anti-Muslim Rally In Lyon, One Day After The Charlie Hedbo Attack (UK Guardian)

One positive note in all this -- Europe has been down this road before and there are people still living who remember it. Many Europeans are determined that 'Never Again' is not only a slogan.

On the weekend before the Paris attacks, Germany's 'Pegida' movement held well-attended anti-Muslim marches in major German cities.  However, they immediately triggered anti-Pegida marches across Germany which were even more heavily attended. Germany, as well as France, remembers its history.

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On this Friday's installment of his cable program, 'Real Time', satirist Bill Maher said flatly, “Hundreds of millions of [Muslims] support an attack like that [i.e., on the staff of Charlie Hebdo].” His guests (including author Salman Rushdie, once targeted by an Iranian death sentence for 'insults to Islam' in a novel), echoed the same sentiments, more or less.

And yesterday, Rupert Murdoch deigned to provide the world with his opinion via Twitter:

Maybe most Moslems [sic] peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible. — January 10, 2015 (@rupertmurdoch)

The majority of responses disagreed (Michael Monan [@MichaelMonan1] asked, "In the same way that you must be held responsible for ordering the hacking of the voicemails of dead school children?").  Undeterred, Little Rupert poured a little more gasoline on the fire:

Big jihadist danger looming everywhere from Philippines to Africa to Europe to US. Political correctness makes for denial and hypocrisy. 

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Murdoch owns one of the largest media conglomerates on earth, a billionaire Oligarch who organized and manages the largest media factory of right-wing distortions and lies ever created -- ranking with Tass and Pravda of the Stalinist era, the national media of modern Communist China, and the media of the nazi state created by Joey Goebbels.

When it was founded, CNN's news format blurred the lines between news as fact, and as entertainment. In developing his own cable news network, Murdoch could have rejected that and created a higher standard in how information is gathered and news presented. He could have treated viewers with the basic assumption that they were intelligent adults, a public that deserved to be given facts about events -- not distortions or editorializing presented as 'news'. Instead, Rupert raced Ted Turner to the bottom.

Our Business Was Founded On The Idea That A Free And Open Press

Should Be A Positive Force In Society.

-- Rupert Murdoch, July 14, 2011

 Rupert's media 'properties' push a huckster's blend of both "Tits 'n Tattle" entertainment and right-wing propaganda. It's a business model that holds people in contempt -- gullible, easily-led children; lowest common denominators. You don't lie to and manipulate people that you respect.

NewsCorp is the unacknowledged, shadow media arm of the political Right, and Rupert revels in having so much power -- in America, waiting to see which right-wing politician will receive his approval (and media support) as the Republican candidate for President is known as "the Murdoch Primary". 

And to ordinary people, the news Rupert's machine pumps out seems grim, even without political spin -- environmental and political crises; regional wars that are blood feuds which can only end with the extermination of one side; the murderous fanaticism of an ISIS or Boko Harum.

The response of Western governments to these crises (e.g., military action against ISIS; aid to stem the spread of Ebola) frequently seem too hesitant, because finding consensus is hard, and finding money to support that consensus may be even harder; the effects of the 2008 Crash our Masters Of The Universe created are still with us.

So, Murdoch's messages (The future is to be feared; Muslims are enemies, and the throwaway reference to 'political correctness' -- Leftist politicians are spineless; they will not Act Decisively to save you) can seem attractive, to some.

Murdoch's opinions are those of a first-generation Oligarch who wants his family's wealth and influence preserved. His media and his messages reflect his vision of the world -- myopic, fearful, suspicious and conspiratorial. Competitors and detractors must be manipulated and dominated, by brute force if necessary, to maintain control and market share ... a very similar worldview, oddly enough, to that of the jihadists.

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What happened in Paris earlier this week is a reminder of how precarious things in the larger world can be. We live with that awareness; it's part of the legacy of being human -- having no real answer to What Is all This? Why Am I Here? but getting up each day and tending to our lives, not knowing when it all may end, and hoping to find some sweetness, moment to moment.

And we each hold a hope that, in that larger world, some positive direction will begin to take shape -- that the people we recognize as leaders will find a way towards Peace, Security; Purpose and Completion; Rest; Love. We don't talk about this directly, or often -- who wants to appear too sentimental, soft, impractical? But that shared hope is who we are, and it shines through in our moods; in a shared glance; in the pauses between parts of conversations with friends.

Most 'ordinary' people understand, in the larger world, that the fix is in, that we're manipulated and lied to as consumers, citizens and voters. We focus on the day-to-day because we don't believe 'ordinary' people have real power in that larger world. Then, something happens (usually, a tragedy) and we realize that the political and social structures we have to live in are less important than our essential humanity -- and that simply being human is a powerful thing.

For a time, we realize that is what matters -- and, we know the moment is fleeting, that we'll dissolve back into separate tribes and camps and that awareness won't last. But while it does, we can smile wildly at each other and link arms and lift our voices, happy as children. Only later will smaller hearts and minds try to make that moment, that recognition between us, into an embarrassment or a joke.

Have you ever been in a crowd which starts to sing the Marseille? The French Revolution was terrible, in many ways, expressions of the best and worst humankind could offer -- Liberté, égalité, fraternité, and the Terror.

For me, the Marseille (and the 'Internationale', and The Star-Spangled Banner) have always expressed that shared recognition -- our desire for real justice, real peace, and not the illusions we're fed by corporate interests or business-as-usual politics. It's a song of solidarity and courage in the face of not knowing where we will all end. 

Murdoch's message, or that of the political Right in Europe, or in America, is not the spirit of the Marseille.  Murdoch's message was not that of the crowds in Paris today. Theirs was about community, not division, and about the courage to demand a larger world where what we hope for will become the birthrights of every human being -- and that today's recognition that we are part of a common humanity, united against fear and resignation, won't  fade away. 

Instant Karma's gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Everyone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you're everywhere
Come and get your share

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
...
John Lennon /
Instant Karma (And We All Shine On) [1969]

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Patrick Modiano, 2014 Nobel Laureate In Literature

 La persistance de ce qui reste dans nos âmes

Patrick Modiano, a publicity-shy French author whose roughly thirty novels (per Reuters)  explore "memory, oblivion, identity and guilt that often take place during the German occupation of World War Two" has been awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Sweden's Academy declared Modiano "a Marcel Proust of our time... for the art of memory with which he has evoked the most ungraspable human destinies and uncovered the life-world of the occupation. ... he returns to generally the same topics again and again, simply because these topics cannot be exhausted".

Again per Reuters, Modiano said in a 2011 interview in France Today, "After each novel, I have the impression that I have cleared it all away. But I know I'll come back over and over again to tiny details, little things that are part of what I am.... In the end, we are all determined by the place and the time in which we were born."

It's difficult to experience the full impact of an author without reading them in their own language; if you think about it outside the context of "preparing a property (as publishers refer to literature) for sale", who is doing the translation and how well they understand in their bones both languages and both cultures becomes incredibly important.

As a Dog who reads, and does read Another Language (not French), I always wonder how many works of incredible ingenuity and imagination are out in the world -- and which I don't know about, because I don't read Urdu, or Turkish, or Japanese.

Fortunately for me, some of Modiano's works have been translated into English.  I can recommend Honeymoon; 'Suspended Sentences'; or Out Of The Dark, which not only involve questions of memory and human connections set in occupied France, but also use the Detective novel as a method of exploring them -- a bit like Marcel Proust and Graham Greene getting together for a drink and a chat.

Another author's works -- American, and a Francophile -- remind me a bit of Modiano because they deal with similar questions, and the Europe they're set in is close to war and occupation or already sliding into it. Given that, I've wondered occasionally whether he had read Modiano and if it influenced his work in any way.

You can find them through The Behemoth The Selling Pit The Soul Destroying Home Of The Demon that very big website where you can buy things, or -- my preference -- go to that very nice independent bookstore in your area and (if you can't find it on the shelf) order them.

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Kim's Small Request Of All Humanity

Why Not?

Seems Reasonable. And, It's Not As If Anything Else Has Worked.

Over the recent holiday, a friend and I were talking about Life In Our City. We spoke ruefully about the number of humans -- resident, transient and tourist -- who seemed packed into the few square miles of this peninsula, and how generally aggressive (particularly in traffic), how quick to take offense, how eager people seemed to go on the offensive over the most trivial issues.  They fought so fiercely, the old homily goes, because the stakes were so small.

"It's general incivility," my friend said, and shook her head. "Some people just don't want to put out the effort to be polite -- and it does take some effort."

We agreed there were events still playing out in the world, a sense we had held since childhood about the perceived stability of things that we could feel, shifting now, right under our feet; my friend sighed and (as I've heard a number of mothers do) wondered about the future world her children would live in.

Then she described a recent altercation while driving, with her pre-teen daughter in the back seat, and having to suffer the antics of a classic Piltdown Man in traffic.

"Eventually, I was able to pull up beside him," she related, "and I maintained myself -- didn't call him a witless motherfucker. Didn't rant and rave. I just looked at him and said, 'Come on; could you just try not to be a Dick? D'you think?'  That was right from the heart. And naturally, he wouldn't look at me."

As I'm fond of saying, about three people (four, if you count Mistah Charlie, Phd.) and a Superintelligent Parakeet read this blog. It informs no one, influences no one. It is not about to become the spark from which the global equivalent of the Slow Food Movement in politeness begins.

But my friend has a point. And yes, it looks very simple.  I'm only a Dog -- but I actually think she's on to something, because how one changes behavior, at times,  seem that simple to me. It's the Yoda theorem:  Be A Dick You Must Not.

So, for all of us -- from the Pope and the Dali Lama, all the way down to you and me; all of us -- Just Try Not To Be A Dick.

And -- pass it on. Perhaps we can get something started here.

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Reprint Heaven: John Neville (1925 - 2011)

The Age Of Reason: Tuesday

Neville As Karl August Friedrich Hieronymous, Baron von Münchausen

The Right Ordinary Horatio Jackson: It seems to me, sir, that you have rather a weak grasp of reality.

Baron von Münchausen: Your 'reality', sir, is lies and balderdash -- and I'm delighted to say I have no grasp of it, whatsoever!

--  Johnathan Pryce, John Neville, The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988)
Dir: Terry Gillam

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Speaking Truth To Stupid

What Dylan Said

Dylan Ratigan

Barbara Tuchman's 1966 book, The Proud Tower, is a history primarily of Europe in the two decades before the First World War; Chapter 6 is entitled, "Neroism Is In The Air" -- a comment by the French pacifist and critic, Romain Rolland, about what he perceived as Europe's then-cultural preoccupation with violence and unease, coupled with complacency, and which he saw as a recipe for destruction, strongman rule, and disaster.

In art and politics, culture and commonplace belief, Europe in the last years of peace before August, 1914, was speeding towards... something. No one knew what it was, but people felt it, like a wind that picks up ahead of a thunderstorm: You can see a peculiar light, the darkened and clotted sky, and smell the dust and the ozone. Even the deaf and the blind can tell something is coming.

Europe in these days is full of signs and portends, too. So is the Middle East. So is our own country. The so-called 'Arab Spring' (gone in the media, now, when the images of masses of people in the streets become tiring to Western eyes)' the mass riots across the UK over the past two weeks; the fact that one (and as of tomorrow, two) self-declared evangelical christians are declared candidates for the Republican presidential nomination; the bizarre shadow-play of the fake debt ceiling crisis manufactured by Rightist Tea Partei bullies which led to S&P's downgrading of U.S. sovereign debt and a $1.5 Trillion dollar loss in the U.S. stock markets in the past five days.

I don't know what you're feeling, but you don't have to be a Dog to see the clouds in the sky, and smell the ozone; Neroism is in the air. But few people are paying any attention, even though everyone knows something is desperately wrong. That common wisdom screams to be heard that things are incredibly out of balance; that jobs are what people need, not forced Austerity; and we must have cooperation rather than the vicious, tribal idiocy that has poisoned our national discourse for almost twenty-five years.

More polarization and division will lead to... Civil War? A Rightist-christianist coup d'etat? No one knows. But we can sense it will not be pretty, and it will in all likelihood end very badly.

From just his position as an economic reporter for CNBC / MSNBC, Dylan Ratigan has often said that America's current economic path is unsustainable and (as Barry Ritholtz on The Big Picture noted), "In a conversation with a [teevee] panel about the country’s debt and credit downgrade... Ratigan passionately calls both the Democratic and Republican economic plans, reckless, irresponsible and stupid" (Though Ritholtz has it embedded in his site, a link to video of Ratigan's comments on is here on the MSNBC site).

Ratigan also has a post at The Big Picture, where he expands in more detail about his on-air comments. I don't like posting people's material in full, and have seldom done it -- but, no one reads this blog, anyway; here are the high points (some paragraphing added for emphasis):

I’m Mad As Hell. How About You?
By Dylan Ratigan - August 11, 2011 8:00PM

Yesterday, on TV, I exploded. I spent two minutes giving a primal yell at our political system, demanding the extraction of our money and dignity end. It was my most heartfelt and emotional moment on television, ever.

And the emails poured in. I hit a chord, because it’s something we all feel...

With the markets in turmoil and the global financial architecture groaning under the weight of fraud and corruption, it’s a good time to think about what leadership would look like. Believe it or not, we have had good leadership, purpose, integrity, and aligned interests in this country.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy faced a dilemma — how could he direct our intense competitive passion with the Soviet Union in a direction other than war? The answer was his call for America to beat the Soviets to the moon. Kennedy understood power; if he did not lead us towards peaceful productive competition, that same animus would have turned violent (see this key memo on the real rationale for the space race). So he took the passion and focus of our society, the technology of war and missiles, and turned it into a great mission to explore space. He gave us a shared goal.

But that’s not the full story. Kennedy also demanded we use the finest scientists and engineers to design the rockets, and made sure that the path to the moon was based on the best possible solution to get there. For large rocket boosters, he was open to chemical, nuclear, liquid fuels, or any combination.

He did not put a commission of astrologers in charge, and he did not put political cronies with no scientific background in charge of designing the rockets.

We had a shared goal, and we had a problem-solving process with integrity and aligned interests. Kennedy was the leader of this initiative, but Americans at that time, possibly because of a shared experience in World War II, had a shared purpose. They believed in prosperity as a goal, and they had a shared set of problem solving values to get there...

Today, we face the same demons as decades past. We have passion, and focus, and we want to compete. What we lack is a set of shared prosperity goals, and a shared problem solving values to get there... We still trust the same corrupted economic establishment, an establishment with no ethos of the importance of problem solving. Astrologers (like S&P) are in charge of job creation.

So now we are locked in a war of ideas and mechanics in a battle for power. But power to what end? The political solutions proposed by DC today are the opposite of Kennedy’s moonshot... there’s no mutual consent to a set of shared goals, integrity on how to achieve them, or aligned interests.

Even where there are policy discussions... [it's] the opinions of discredited ratings agencies that seem to matter. So our choices are organized around austerity measures that we know will not cut debt loads. Again, it’s using astrology to get to the moon.

...We need, as citizens, a shared purpose. And we need a commitment to integrity of process, and aligned interests so the incentives exist for all of us to contribute. You can talk to billionaires — and I have — who are scared for their children, for their country, and for the world. And if billionaires can’t create the changes we need in the machine, if Congress can’t, if the President can’t, then we must look to ourselves.

When Kennedy called for the country to go to the moon, he said that “no single space project will be more impressive to mankind… and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish”... This is shared purpose — Americans paid taxes, worked on rockets, trained as astronauts, cleaned NASA buildings, or did whatever they could do — to get each one of us to the moon using shared values to solve problems that got us closer to our objective...

This is the spirit we need today. We need to fight against the great ideological machine that lacks purpose, lacks integrity, and lacks aligned interests. The first step is to recognize our own place in it.

If we believe that our problems are all due to the Tea Party, or Obama, or corporate power brokers, or liberals, then we’re lacking the integrity necessary to reach any goal. The reality is, by boxing ourselves into a tribal two-party state, we are all part of the machine. And so, in order to change it, we must simply change our own minds. We must reorient our own ways of thinking, to a leadership driven model of citizenship.

It isn’t enough, or even necessarily important, to care about which politician is in charge. We must seek within our own lives and our own politics, food, culture, families, and schools, values. We must share a set of prosperity goals — full employment, clean energy, patient driven health care, high-quality universal education — and push our leaders and ourselves to achieve them.

...

And so we must figure out how to stop giving our consent and legitimacy to an unthinking mechanical beast that runs our lives, a beast which enslaves us to accounting mechanisms like debt ceilings instead of the shared prosperity we seek as a culture and society. We must figure out how to restore the integrity necessary to actually solve our problems and we must understand how to align all of our interests so we each have the incentives to solve them. That way, we can ensure our bridges don’t fall down and our job creation initiatives actually create jobs.

I have no doubt that by rededicating ourselves, another moonshot is inevitable. That’s just what happens when problem-solving people dedicate themselves to prosperity as a goal, make sure that integrity is the keystone of how they achieve it, and align their interests so it is doable.

Yeah; what Dylan said.

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33-29, NY Senate Legalizes Gay Marriage

A Step

I wouldn't place this event on the level of a state outlawing slavery (as happened before the Civil War), but there is a parallel: Both positions embody the recognition of a human being as a human being, beyond any change of their status in law -- i.e., from chattel or negro, to Person; from hellbound deviants, to Just The [G/L] Couple Who Lives Next Door.

There will be backlash; of that I'm certain. In California, it was primarily opposition from the Mormon church leadership, in the form of a large bucket 'o money, which fueled Proposition 8.

And, while being LGBT in a predominantly Straight culture differs in fundamental ways from being a different race in a culture predominantly defined by Caucasians, people should remember that it was a long march from the Dred Scott decision to the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation to the Civil Rights Act -- a march still going on. The important lesson was: Keep marching.

The concept of A Common Humanity has not yet been enshrined above all others in our cultural and legal lexicon -- a few things (primarily race, money, religion) are still stumbling blocks in our understanding that all of us should have equal rights, and be granted the recognition that among other things human beings do is meet, fall in love, and make a life together.

Life can be hard. Somewhere in my Dog brain, I believe attempting to make a life together can make people happy. And even with our grasping for status, money, possession, acceptance; isn't that what we're all after -- to try and be happy in ways that don't harm or exploit others, but simply allow us to be what we are; human?

Life can be short. In the absence of any other incontrovertible evidence about what Existence might be, isn't the point to try and overcome our own learned or inherited junk, leave the world a better place than we found it, for the benefit of everyone else -- and to be happy as often as we can?

Isn't it?

But, I'm only a Dog, and no one listens to me.

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Other People Better Than Me

They Get Way Better Traffic, Too

I just wanted to say that Fafblog was absolutely right. Period. That's all I wanted to say.

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Alice Miller (1923 - 2010)

Dr. Alice Miller, author of a number of works regarding the effect of physical or sexual abuse in childhood, passed away on April 14th at her home in Provence, France; her death was announced on the 23rd by her German publisher.

Her obituary in The New York Times noted that her first book, The Drama of the Gifted Child (originally titled 'Prisoners of Childhood') set forth in three essays "a simple but harrowing proposition. All children, she wrote, suffer trauma and permanent psychic scarring at the hands of parents, who enforce codes of conduct through psychological pressure or corporal punishment: slaps, spankings or, in extreme cases, sustained physical abuse and even torture."

"Unable to admit the rage they feel toward their tormenters," the Times continued, "Dr. Miller contended [that] these damaged children limp along through life, weighed down by depression and insecurity, and pass the abuse along to the next generation, in an unending cycle. Some, in a pathetic effort to please their parents and serve their needs, distinguish themselves in the arts or professions. The Stalins and the Hitlers, Dr. Miller later wrote, inflict their childhood traumas on millions."

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Why I Am A Socialist

Sex in the workplace is hot!
A shame that 4 million Germans can't enjoy it!
SPD!

Poster advertising Germany's Sozial-Demokratische Partei, or SPD, the Social Democrats. Their position as the ruling party in the German Bundestag for quite a while had given them the ability to appoint one of its party leaders as Chancellor, and a majority of cabinet ministers -- to run the government and set national policy, so long as they held a parliamentary majority.

That Pull Position of the SPD ended in 2005 with nationwide elections. The SPD / Green Party coalition (which had dominated Germany's government and policies for neatly 20 years) had broken apart, allowing the conservative CDU (Christian Demokratische Union) to take a majority of seats in the Bundestag -- something they have continued to do since. Germany's current Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was appointed in 2005 and is principal leader of the CDU.

The CDU is roughly equivalent to our Republican party -- except, without being pushed farther and farther to the Right by fundamentalist religious crazies, or having its party's future shaped by barely stable media personalities who preach a particularly vicious, know-nothing brand of hatred in the name of making Even More Money.


Lil' Boots Attempts To Give The Chancellor Of Germany A Shoulder
Massage: G8 Summit, 2008. (Laß mich in Ruhe, Lumpenhund!)

German conservatives are -- well, conservative -- but much more adult. Most European politicians are certainly capable of lining their own pockets, but they give more than just lip service (Silvio! being the exception) to the belief that politicians are in fact accountable to their people, rather than to the Rich, and to each other, as it is here.

Unfortunately, few Americans are interested in European politics. Most Europeans look at America's internal political clown show with a grimace, but most Germans also look at us with real alarm: They've seen what's happening here before.

They've already been down the road our Right (and Left) seem determined to take us -- and they note we don't seem to care, which alarms them even more. Germans tend to get frightened and angry when any form of totalitarianism appears; and some get really angry. Like, shove-a-boot-up-the-ass-of-any-neonazis-first, and worry-about-the-niceties-of-political-discourse-later kind of angry (As Woody Allen put it in Manhattan, "No; physical force is always better with nazis; 'cause it's hard to satirize a guy in shiny boots").


Schieb' ein Stiefel in ihren Arsch! Berlin, 1.5.04
Anitnazi Poster -- Lisa With Tire Chain and Pepperspray;
"Prevent Nazi March In Berlin!" Put A Boot Up Their Ass!
(Poster by Antifa, an antifascist coalition; No Pasarán!)

Gosh; think they might have a reason for feeling this way? Think they might know what Rightist political extremism leads to?

Why did 200,000 Germans come to the Siegessäule in Berlin on July 24, 2008, to listen to (then-candidate) Obama speak? I'll be succinct: Because Bush, his cronies and handlers were seen by Europeans as running a proto-fascist, repressive government, in control of (what was then) the most powerful economy and military in the world.



To Europeans, the Bush-time smacked of the Hitlerzeit -- an aggressive war, waged primarily to prove America's foreign policy was now based on invading whomever it wanted and intimidating anyone else; complete with secret police, secret arrests and prisons; torture as official policy; special laws for enemies of the State and secret courts; mass surveillance of communications; and demands for an uncritical support and loyalty to the State by the mass media.

All of this frightened Europeans -- because many alive today can still remember what German (or Soviet, or their own home-grown Communist) occupation felt like. Their history (unlike ours) is a progression of wars, of lives disrupted and repressed, destroyed, and millions murdered by tyrants and religious mania. They know, too, what swearing allegiance, giving up your Soul to a tyrant or the "-ism" of the moment is like, and what the cost of that can be -- the Germans in particular.



And, I would bet serious money that many of the 200,000 Germans who came to see Obama speak did so (not because of a rock band or free food, as Right-wing blogs trumpeted in the U.S.) but at a minimum because Obama's appearance meant that the idea of America -- the 'Noble Experiment' in representative government begun in 1776, might not end in failure and the kind of totalitarianism their own history has seen.

Many Europeans believe in the power of ideas, and of hope; often, it's all they've had to hang on. The idea of America has always represented the Rule Of Law, and at least the notion that a basic fairness in human affairs was possible. Most Europeans saw Bush's rule as effectively shitting on not just that tradition, but on the concepts themselves.

So, on that Summer evening approaching sunset at the 'Grosser Stern' in the western half of the Tiergarten, when a clear sky is made out of pale colors so delicate they seem floating, liquid; a Hochsommer hint of Lime trees and Lindens in the air... at that moment, to the 200,000 listening, Obama represented the ideas and the hope that America can still claim to hold out to the world.

However, Obama's Presidency hasn't quite worked out so well. If anything, America's liberals and progressives seem dispirited and disappointed. The Banksters are firmly in control; if you believe our conservative-leaning media, the Right appears poised to roar back in our faces, and the fringe elements -- the Becks, Palins, Bachmanns, Limbaughs and screeching Teabaggers; all of them courted, pampered and feted by the Mainstream Media -- keep pushing the GOP ever further Rightwards, from common sense to a radical, fundamentalist-christian-colored incoherence.



They're no longer a political party of fiscal sobriety and smaller government; they're a party of crony politics and corruption, run by unstable personalities who only believe in power, and maintaining it.

Climate change agreements are in the toilet (Industrialized Nations To 'Developing World': Learn To Swim); the Goldman-Sachs' of the world keep getting obscenely richer, with active assistance from the Obama administration; hundreds of thousands of ARM mortgages on American homes will reset in 2010, leading to more unemployment and another kick in the teeth to an already damaged economy -- and the administration we elected to right the country and reverse the damage done by the Thugs are doing very little -- most of their political capital is now spent on a Health Care Bill which will years of fine-tuning to make any real difference to human beings, and will probably be sabotaged by the Right.


More Homeless; Fewer Busses; Larger School Classes, Fewer
Teachers; Higher Prices; No New Jobs -- Thank Lil' Boots
and Wall Street... (Photo: The Homelessblog, 2008)

In short, we seem to be entering a Weimarzeit of our own, which the Germans know very well: The time of the Weimar Republic, fourteen short years between the Germany of the Kaisers and World War One, and the rule of the nazis. Everyone knows what happened after that.

The Weimar-time was marked by growing disorganization in government, hysterical political agitation, and the alienation of regular citizens from the idea of 'government' at all. Well-meaning liberal or centrist governments were continually paralyzed by demonstrations and attacks from the Right. Finally, frightened of the possibility of a far-Left takeover, the Weimar government offered Hitler the position of Chancellor, to unite most of the political parties in the Reichtag into a coalition which could get something done (Hey! Guys! How'd that work out?).


(Cartoon By Mr. Fish; Harper's Magazine)

Nothing seems to be able to stop the Rich, and the Right, from rising -- and making the United States into a place more like Oligarch-run Russia, where wealth and power rule; and the rest of us should be fucking grateful for long hours and less benefits. And, we'd better learn to keep our traps shut, move along, and remember to bow and smile when Our Betters pass by.

A German acquaintance (who is a lifelong SPD member, back home) said to me some months ago, "It is part of the understanding of every European what can happen when a country's government is driven farther Right by a radical minority," she said. "You end up with oligarchs and fascism, no matter what name you call it."

"This is part of the lesson of what happened, with [Germany], with Spain, with Russia; with the Eastern European dictatorships under Communism. The warnings are right in front of you. But America thinks it's immune from history, somehow -- you are just allowing this to be a real possibility, letting this happen. Like [the Germans] allowed the nazis to happen. And, your Democratic party seems willing to participate in this."


Lesson Of History Learned: Dresden, February, 2009:
Police restraining Antifa coalition demonstrators
at annual neo-nazi march on anniversary of the city's
firebombing in 1945 (Photo: Reuters)

"Don't your people even remember what it was like with [Lil' Boots] Bush? That was nothing -- a taste. But we know what can happen -- to you, too -- and it can be worse. It might not happen for you; I hope not -- but it's part of our history, and believe me, no one is special," she finished, and shrugged. "Maybe you won't believe it's possible, until it happens to you."


Message From Palin-Huckabee and the Republican Party, 2012

Oh, yes -- The SPD poster which started this whole post is about high unemployment, and presented in a way that wouldn't be allowed here in America without making Xtian fascists upset... and we just can't have that, can we.

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