What: "Separating the truly scary from the bogus frights", SeattlePI.com
When: October 27, 2011
The last time America picked a president without resorting to a campaign filled with false accusations and trumped up crises was probably in 1796 when an unopposed George Washington won a second term.
By 1800, the compulsion to do battle over bogus issues had kicked in and, since then, many a campaign has been built on manufactured fear. Campaign 2012 is no different.
Watching the Republicans' serial presidential debates, one would think the most fearsome problems confronting Americans are high taxes that are killing economic activity, onerous regulations that keep businessmen from creating jobs, illegal immigration, gay marriage and a president who is too weak to confront Islamic terrorists and dictators.
Well, if you say something often enough and loud enough, people may begin to think it's important, but, outside the realm of boilerplate conservative applause lines, there are far more worrisome threats facing the country.
Halloween is a year-roud enterprise for some. While many criticize the American political circus for its histrionics, and plenty will attempt to sound sage while pointing out that it happens on both sides of the aisle, there is a fundamental process at work that often goes unnoticed for its subtlety.
And it is true that subtlety in politics can be counted as anything short of a twenty-five mile crack in the ice shelf. One sometimes wonders at the psychological processes governing voter perceptions, and whether the phrase cognitive dissonance has not actually been beaten to death in recent years.
Start with two basic considerations: First, Americans generally regard their economy as capitalist. Secondly, currency comes in many forms. This latter demands some degree of artistic license. As Steven Brust explained in the fantasy novel Yendi:
"You see, Aliera was saying, "we only kill people who deserve it. You kill anyone you're paid to kill."
Norathar pretended surprise. "But you're paid too, aren't you? It's merely a different coin. A Jhereg assassin would be paid in gold, or so I assume—I've never actually met one. A Dragon, on the other hand, is paid by satisfying his bloodlust."
I chuckled a little. Score one for our team. Aliera also smiled and raised her glass. I looked at her closely. Yes, I decided, she wasn't doing any idle Jhereg baiting. She was searching for something.
"So tell me," Aliera asked, "which do you consider the better coin to be paid in?"
"Well, I've never bought anything with bloodlust, but—"
"It can be done."
"Indeed? What can you buy, pray tell?"
"Empires," said Aliera e'Kieron. "Empires."
Norathar e'Lanya raised her eyebrow. "Empires, my lady? What would I do with one?"
Aliera shrugged. "I'm sure you could think of something."
Obviously, there is a lot there. But this isn't so much about bloodlust as buying empires or hegemony. Consider this: If the reward one seeks is election to public office, then what is one willing to invest?
Or, if the currency is political power, what is the capitalist thing to do? How does one earn that payment?
The short answer, of course, is to win at the ballot box. But consider Horsey's attempt to be fair.
When they talk about the jobs crisis, Mitt Romney or whoever beats him will continue to blab about the taxation and regulation of "job creators." Obama, meanwhile, will talk about using government subsidies to put people to work building infrastructure and a green economy. Neither one will acknowledge that maybe the world has changed and, thanks to a globalized workforce and the rise of robotics and computerization, the American job market may never be what it once was. That's just a little too real and scary for anyone promising a Reaganesque "Morning in America."
It isn't that he is without a point, nor that his point is worthless. But there are plenty of things leftists might say about the rise of robotics. It's the twenty-first century and we still haven't caught up to the Luddites.
But that is Horsey's attempt to present a balanced consideration. If you say something often and loud enough ....
Of the Republicans, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist offers plenty of exhibits suggesting the Republican estrangement from reality: high taxes, over-regulation, illegal immigration, gay marriage, and Barack Obama's foreign policy weakness. On all these issues, the observable facts disagree with Republicans, but the right wing doesn't let that stop them. And there is a reason.
Since the 1990s, the Democrats have retained their liberal base only by the grace of our two-party system. Ever since President Clinton conceded the Reagan economy and stole load-bearing planks of the GOP's platform, the Democratic Party has drifted steadily to the right. But for those who can remember, liberalism has long been associated with a demon Americans fear more than Islam. Liberals are pinkos. Reds. No, remember before the whole red-state, blue-state thing? You know, Reagan, the Cold War? Commies. And the blue-blooded conservatives were more closely associated with ... capitalism.
It makes a certain amount of sense that the GOP should be operating so far out in the galaxy, orbiting so distantly from the gravitational center of reality. A confluence of factors presents the current economic crisis in a different light. There are many who are only now waking up to the fact that the longest Americans have gone without wrecking their economy was the thirty-six years between the end of World War II and the 1981 recession. That period was an anomaly; if a quarter-century goes by without blowing the economy to smithereens, it's been a good run.
To the children born today, you can promise at least one economic crisis before their first legal beer, and maybe two before their thirtieth birthday.
Welcome to the world. Americans, generally speaking, are the fortunate ones, yet this is what we can promise.
Or ....
And therein lies the question.
Horsey is right to fret over automation. For all we hear from the capitalists about how the free market is the key to affluence, it is not an equal opportunity affluence. When it comes time to ante up, the capitalists sit on their wealth. The job creators are on strike. Do we really think, given their record of fulfilling the great promise of capitalism, that the job creators would actually hire people if they could get robots to do it instead? This is a fundamental question of how capitalism works. It underpins The Mask of Anarchy" and Frame Bill:
Some folks for certain have thought it was shocking,
When Famine appeals, and when Poverty groans,
That life should be valued at less than a stocking,
And breaking of frames lead to breaking of bones.
If it should prove so, I trust, by this token,
(And who will refuse to partake in the hope?)
That the frames of the fools may be first to be broken,
Who, when asked for a remedy, sent down a rope.
The whole world has been here before. And the United States, most certainly, has been here before. The American roster of crises is nearly shocking: 1792 (which led to the Buttonwood Agreement; "Never again!"), 1796, 1819, 1837, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1893, 1896, 1901, 1907, 1929 (the Great Depression, through WWII), 1981, 1987, 1989, 2007.
We could also include the great dot-com bubble that broke in 2001, precipitating the current economic crisis.
But people are awake for the moment. And the result is that the capitalists are lashing out:
"I, like you, get a little incensed when you think about how much good all of you do, whether it's volunteer hours, charitable giving we do, serving clients and customers well," Moynihan said during the Oct. 18 gathering. To the bank's critics, he said, "You ought to think a little about that before you start yelling at us."
This is why the bogus frights. This is why Republican candidates will say anything, regardless of the applicable facts, to get elected. And, yes, politicians of all stripes will say anything to get elected, but look at what we're getting from the GOP field. The fact that things are miserable is no excuse to go leaping from the precipice.
But the problem the GOP faces is that conservatives have no solutions. No proven solutions. No workable solutions. No reasonable solutions. That's why the beneficiaries of the job market angst that swept in so many Republicans in the 2010 midterm election has resulted in a House of Representatives that would rather vote to reaffirm, "In God We Trust", as the national motto, and their fellows in the state houses are busy attacking collective bargaining, or rearranging zoning laws to close medical facilities.
Ultimately, what we are seeing is the diffuse influence of capitalism. If the profit is winning political office, then what, really, is off limits to win it? We see what unchecked greed does to capitalism. One need not have a deviant imagination to apply the metaphor. They will say anything, do anything, lie about anything, in order to sell you their product.
There are a lot of reasons to talk about the future job market as Horsey notes it, but when we pause to think that it is somehow unacceptably socialist, communist, fascist, or even, in some cases, "Jewish" (ask the Tea Party) to provide reasonable access to health care, what chance do the Luddites really have? Their name is a pejorative in modern parlance.
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