The American Dream

We hear a great deal about "the American dream" and I know pretty well what people these days mean by that. However, I am equally unsure what "the American dream" really means. What dream and whose dream are we talking about? If we are talking about the original immigrants or colonizers of America, I suppose that the dream was life without religious persecution and land that was free for settlement. They did, of course, begin to persecute themselves; and there was the little matter of clearing off indigenous people in order to settle. Not too clear in retrospect how virtuous any of that really was. 

Perhaps the first great vision of an "American dream" was Jefferson's vision of a nation of landed citizens. Democracy made sense in that situation even though I am skeptical that real democracy ever existed in the US. Anyway, the Industrial Revolution removed people from the land. The US Census does not even track the population of small farmers anymore; the number is too tiny compared to the general population (less than 1%). Even farming is industrialized today. What that means is that no one has a natural path to survival anymore. Everyone must "work the system" in some way in order to survive. So, in a Capitalist world, that means that almost everyone is a "surf" in the new system of "corporate capitalism." You take the wages that you can get and you make do with what you have.

So I suppose that, having been dropped into a struggle for survival off the land or without any other free supporting body, we imagine "the American dream" to be this: that everybody has a reasonable chance at succeeding if they apply themselves. But this is where we encounter the great rift in American political thought. Those of a Democratic persuasion focus on "everybody has a reasonable chance" and those of a Republican persuasion focus on "apply themselves." Thus, for Democrats the failure of the American dream is the fact that only a few have a reasonable chance while many have no chance at all. For Republicans, on the other hand, the failure is the fact that people are lazy and just do not apply themselves. Democrats tend to ignore the fact that many people really are lazy and or conniving and take advantage of gifts. Republicans tend to ignore the improbability of reasonable chances. But since no one is willing to talk intelligently across this ideological divide, there is little chance of moderating the rift. Elections stack up to being almost 50/50 match-ups between diametrically opposite tendencies. There is, of course, one other important dimension to this rift. Democrats believe that government is uniquely situated to help the people achieve the dream, and Republicans do not want government to interfere. Taxation is theft and the government should be stripped of most of its powers. What Capitalists want is protection of property --- hence, a police presence and large military budget.

As we work our way toward the election of 2012, the real issue before us is what kind of society we want. When it comes down to basics, that is what government is really about. Government is the way in which a people (commonwealth) exercises its collective power to shape its own destiny. The choices before us are in stark contrast to each other. Democrats believe that part of the aim of government is to "promote the general welfare" of society as expressed in the Constitution ("We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."). In this respect, they believe that parents should be given aid in rearing their children to become good citizens, that young people should be provided the benefits of education, that workers should receive reasonable compensation for their labors, and that everyone should have the benefits of adequate health care.

What Republicans seem to want is a tax policy that enormously favors extreme wealth and withdraws all Federal programs for promoting the general welfare. I confess that I do not understand what this means as a "vision of a desirable society" except that it would seem we should simply watch people starve and die in our cities and ignore the whole thing as much as we can. If this is not the Republican ideal, then how do they really see this policy working out?

The Price of Gas

Well, as expected, the Republicans are now blaming the price of gas on Obama. The real question, though, is whether anyone wants to explore the facts about why gas prices are where they are.

First of all, the Federal government does not own gas production. In our thoroughly revered system of free-market capitalism, the production of gas is owned by hugely wealthy oil capitalists. (Actually, these are the people who probably own the Federal government rather than vice versa.)

Second, the price of crude oil is largely controlled by the world market and the market, presently, is dominated by major speculation about the supply of oil coming out of the Middle East. Without much control, the major producers of gasoline will have to set prices based on the price of crude oil, speculation or not. The US is far from the only consumer in the marketplace. China and other countries are becoming aggressive consumers of oil.

Third, US producers of crude oil (oil pumped out of US territories) are currently exporting part of their production. Get it? US both imports and exports oil. The gas price has nothing to do with the current supply in the US and, hence, nothing to do with more drilling on and off shore. (But they are always eager to use any excuse to push us to allow more drilling!!) "Drill baby drill" will do nothing to gasoline prices in the US.

What nobody wants to talk about is the fact that if the US producers who presently export crude were to sell their oil in the US and, consequently, elevate the supply in the US, the price of gas would drop. But, naturally, the wealthy owners of our oil production have no interest in dropping the price of gas in the US when they can sell to countries where the price of gas is $5 or even $6 per gallon. Our revered capitalists simply have no interest in lowering American gas prices. As always, their great interest lies in making as much money as possible.

More War??

One of the most frustrating things about American government today is that it really does not matter which party is in office when it comes to our compulsive war mongering. We are just out of the mess in Iraq and we are only just beginning to talk about maybe being willing to leave Afganistan, and now we are waving our rifles and bombs in the air in threatening motions toward Iran. Meanwhile, we blame the whole national economic crisis on Big Government and totally ignore the bizarre reality that America spends more on its military than all other countries of the world combined! Why? Is this what Eisenhower meant when he told us to "beware the military-industrial complex?"

Well, today, we are told that Israel may well attack Iran this spring. Oh, great. Where will we stand on that? We will, of course, get totally sucked into that war so there we will be, fighting yet another war in the Middle East. We will not, of course, reflect upon the expense of lives (either ours or theirs) nor will we bother to reflect upon the expense of yet billions more dollars. When it comes to our war machine, we really don't care how much we spend or where the money comes from. (Debt, what is that?)

Is there any rationality connected with this militarism at all? Actually, I think not. What is the track record for actually "winning" wars? Well, in some sense we "won" the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific. We did, of course, manage to withdraw from both regions and we wound up realizing that we had to re-build both enemies in order to secure any meaningful peace. In Korea, the war is actually still on. We just agreed to stop shooting at each other. In Vietnam, we foolishly decided to take over a failed French colonial policy and look what happened. We lost that war because it was an un-win-able war. Exercising some intelligence could have saved us, but we are short on intelligence when it comes to our military engagements.

In 1991 we pushed the Iraqis out of Kuwait. As we all said back then, we probably would never have bothered if the chief product of Kuwait had been broccoli. The elder Bush stopped the military from going all the way to Bagdad so, later on, his wild son Bush II had to spend billions of American dollars and destroy thousands of lives to show off to his daddy that he could face down Saddam Hussein. Who ever thought that we could wage a war on Iraq and do what? We're going to change Iraq? Ridiculous. So now we have finally left (more or less) and nothing has really changed. It's the same society and it will go its own way.

Afganistan! Did we ever bother to study what happened to the Russians in Afganistan? Why did we believe that the results would be any different? For that matter, why do we seem to believe that we can storm into any country, bomb the shit out of their population, land our forces in their towns and farmlands, and utter things about forming democratic governments, and expect that change will occur? If some country did that to us, we would be in the streets and alleys fighting tooth-and-nail. We would be planting IUDs, car bombs, etc. We don't seem to understand that what we face is just plain human nature.

So now we are waiving our weapons in front of Iran. Why? Well, largely to protect Israel. Yes, this time (and for the last many decades) we are picking up on a failed British colonial problem. Why do we seem compelled to solve European failures?

Ah, election year!

Well, it is 2012 and it is the year of national elections. The media will blast us with commentaries, predictions, interviews, and debates. But how much truth will come to us versus out-and-out falsehoods?

Barak Obama will be blamed for everything wrong with the economy and will be painted as a wild-eyed Socialist and (probably) a Muslim who wants to convert us all to Sharia Law. No problem that almost everything wrong with the economy began with --- and was caused by --- George W. Bush. Democrats, like me, certainly wish that Obama had been able to do more to solve our economic problems in his first three years, but I don't think anyone else could have done better. Then, look what he has been up against in the last year!

To me, the most depressing part of the political spectacle that we will be witnessing during the coming year is how antithetical it is to the spirit of democracy. Sound contradictory? Isn't the right to vote what democracy means? Well, no. The issue about voting is that we have genuine choices. Then, we need to be well and truthfully informed about the choices we are making. And finally, we need to have honest follow-up to see what our elected officials are doing with our votes.

Instead, our government is founded on money --- significant money. Candidates with significant money behind them get in front of the people and get elected. The critical issues that might make a real difference in the country's future are so protected by money that they never find a voice. Money-laiden candidates invent a variety of shallow issues to offer the appearance of choice. After election, the big donors who financed the candidates take over the governing process. This is happening in both parties so no one really offers much of a choice.

So sit back and watch, but you won't see much that really connects with reality.

Some Talk about Abortion Issues

During the last couple of days, I have had a discussion on Facebook with a "friend" regarding abortion issues. The friend wants to use some rather new high-tech visions of egg-fertilization as arguments for his (I think) extreme view that personhood begins at fertilization of the female ovum. He holds to this view so strongly that he is willing to condemn abortions in even cases of incest or rape. While he hasn't mentioned it, I am sure that he would also condemn the so-called "morning-after pill."

What I want to discuss here is the assertion that the biology of egg fertilization is even relevant to the social issues of abortion. Since this particular anti-abortion argument rests on claiming that a "person" is present in the womb immediately after fertilization of an ovum is successful, my assertion is equivalent to saying that biology is not relevant to determining that a person is present in the womb. The abortion argument is still more complicated, of course, because it also requires us to believe that a "person" in any stage of development has the right to protection of its life. Even if one were to admit that the fertilized ovum is a person, it would not be true necessarily, in our society, that such a person is granted the right to protection of its life. The 14th Amendment to our Constitution defines the rights of citizenship in the following way: "1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" (my emphasis). The right to protection of life does not follow the word 'person' wherever we want to carry it; indeed, only persons who are "born" fall within this protection. Framers of the Constitution and their heirs obviously never foresaw the possibility that fetal development would be protected under the 14th Amendment.

However, let's get back to the issue of whether biology informs us of anything relevant to this debate. There are different levels of discourse within the field of biology. Microbiology works with various chemicals (mainly macromolecules) and rises to the identification of genes. Taxonomy, on the other hand, observes and classifies the objects in our world that we understand to fall within the domain of biology, namely, living organisms. Biology assumes no differences between humans (homo sapiens sapiens) and other animal species. Indeed, biology sees humans as evolving over a long period of time out of more primitive animal species. Nor is there any inherent reason why microbiology would distinguish anything different in the human division of animal life. In biology, we can talk about an individual human (homo sapiens sapiens) but there is no word 'person' in the biology vocabulary. Up to the time of birth (or artificial separation) the developing fertilized ovum is simply called a 'fetus'. 

What is going on here is what the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein called playing language games. One of the big errors that people frequently make is that of believing that all language is somehow continuous and inter-connected. But Wittgenstein observed that language is actually divided up into many independent systems of definitions. Thus, if I choose to play the "biology language game," I am constrained to use the vocabulary and systematic relationships of meaning in that game. I cannot meaningfully carry other words into a discussion of biology.

Thus, if I want to use words like 'person' and 'rights', I must begin by determining the language game in which these are meaningful. Discussion of the abortion issue seems to occur mainly in what we might call the "legal language game." In that game, various rights have been attributed to persons and persons have traditionally been understood as human members of the society in which laws and rights are defined. At the time of the framing of our Constitution, the word 'person' was attributed to white male adults. If female adults were viewed as persons, they were not persons with the robust collection of rights possessed by men. African slaves were not viewed as whole persons, nor were children of any color. While I am no expert on this, my impression is that both the meaning of 'person' and the availability of rights began to change in various ways throughout the 19th Century. While children would not possess all rights and would be looked upon as subordinate persons until "coming of age," they were increasingly seen as having the right of protection by society. Hence, in the movement toward wide-ranging public education in the early 19th Century, a child's right to mental development was protected. In the child labor laws of the late 19th Century, a child's health, safety, and education were protected. Still, children today do not possess all the rights possessed by adults of our society. 

Pro-life advocates are really arguing within the legal language game of our particular society and are actually arguing two separate points. First, they are arguing that we should extend the meaning of the word 'person' to include what biologists call the human fetus. A woman who has become pregnant should really be referred to as being "with person." Second, they are arguing that certain rights possessed by persons should follow this extension of meaning into the woman's body. As seen in the previous discussion, not all rights apply to every person. But the argument here is that the right of certain protections should apply. In particular, the protection of life should apply. But, if this is the case, we should note that the protection of the person's development toward a happy normal life might also be insisted upon. In other words, if we view a fetus as a person, then we might be obligating our society to assure that the fetus will be well cared for in all respects. Women who smoke or drink alcohol or take drugs during pregnancy might be liable for arrest and punishment. Indeed, since the woman's body is now the living quarter of an official person, society may have made itself responsible for the health, nutrition, and safety of those "quarters." 

What interests me --- and I will end here --- is that pro-lifers are so desperate to save the life of the fetus they want to call a person, but they really have no concern about protecting the well-being of the life they have saved. I say that because most of the people who are pro-life are also very antagonistic toward government intrusion into our lives and are largely opposed to social services such as welfare.

Occupy What?

I am really getting tired of people who look at the Occupy Wall Street protestors and just call them deadbeats and tell them to go out and get jobs. While I am fairly confident that there probably are some deadbeats in the mix, I am equally confident that there are many who are simply fed up with the American situation and need to do something (whatever seems possible at present) about it. It is ridiculous to scream at people that they should get jobs and work when the jobs simply do not exist. 

All of this yelling, it seems to me, is a device for ignoring the point of the protests --- and maybe an excuse for not joining them. The American economic system is badly broken and it is not going to repair itself. On one side, the 1% has successfully waged a "class war" over the last thirty years or so in which they have cornered most of the wealth in the country. They have done that by buying off the government --- Federal and state both --- and reducing their tax contributions to all time lows. They have also done this by elevating salaries and bonuses for executives like themselves to ridiculous amounts. The 1% lives by a simple truth; they have the power so they take the money.

The meaning of "economy" in Greek was essentially "household management." In modern times "economy" applies to communities or commonwealths  and is the way in which the production and distribution of goods and services is organized. When the system was based on barter, there was a clear understanding of who has produced what and how the distribution proceeds. When barter is replaced by a system of money exchange, however, the accumulation of wealth becomes possible. Then, all one needs is a system of protecting wealth. Kings and nobles amassed armies. Modern governments a la John Locke instituted laws and administered enforcement. In modern times the feudal system of kings, church, and serfs has been replaced by a modern system of "corporate feudalism" in which the corporation owns everything, the government protects corporate interests, and the people work to maintain what they can in the margin. Doubtless that corporate feudalism is just as much a "system" as was household management; but there is one enormous difference. In the household there were social (moral) relations between husband, wife, children, and slaves. Corporate (capitalism) feudalism today functions under no sense of relationship, no moral bond; it simply pursues the accumulation of more wealth. The name of the game is purely Greed. 

In the 19th Century, Marx clearly and convincingly described the situation of uncontrolled capitalism. Motivated by greed, the capitalist will always attempt to extract the maximum amount of work from labor and pay as little as is possible. Since no "social consciousness" is involved, the worker's plight is left to a losing fight to make ends meet. The proletariat class is created and it expands. Marx concluded that the proletariat would eventually be forced to rebel or simply starve. 

Interestingly, Lenin realized that the major Western economies were headed in a different direction. Through the system of Imperialism they could export the proletariat class to what we have come to call the Third World. By a system of economic colonization, the Western states obtained their raw materials from the Third World and they paid higher wages to their own workers so as to create a friendly and cooperative "middle class." The middle class, being modestly well off, would not rebel and the foreign proletariat would be too far away.

This system worked effectively through the middle of the 20th Century and then it started to come apart. It has been coming apart ever since. What is interesting (in an academic sort of way) is that the system came apart not only because the colonies began to rebel and declare independence, but that capitalists decided to join the program. Advanced transportation and communication technologies now allowed corporations to move production facilities off-shore and, hence, to cut off the American worker completely. The same technologies allowed corporations to move their wealth off-shore as well --- which they have done under the flag of "globalization". In short, the whole idea of the middle class has been abandoned in America. So as the ranks of the proletariat come together again in the American economy, we have to ask where this will take us. But what we face is something different than we might have faced in the 19th Century. We face corporations that still remain in control of the government over us but have also rendered themselves less vulnerable to rebellion by being largely absentee holders of American wealth. 

The Occupy movement may not be articulating all of this but I do believe that they are an early vanguard of something quite important in the evolution of an American political economy.

Where Is the Problem?

50% of American voters, more or less, vote for Republican candidates. However, Republican candidates who are elected tenaciously underwrite the interests of the 1% most wealthy Americans and very frequently act against the interests of the other 49% who voted for them. Frankly, I don't get it. Why do the 49%ers consistently vote against their own interests?

In a recent conversation about this, my wife suggested that it is all about the social agenda. While people may claim that the economy is their biggest issue, today, they still vote according to the social issues as they see them. And Republicans have consistently and successfully built their case on the social issues. Look at their voting record in the House, this last fall. They have spent far more time voting up ridiculous social agenda items that will never pass the Senate or escape a Presidential veto, far more than any sensible approach to the economy. Why? Because it is in their best interest to keep the 49% thinking they are represented on their favorite social issues.

So what are these issues? Life should be defined as beginning with conception after proper insemination --- preferably in the "missionary position." Abortions of any kind, therefore, should be absolutely illegal no matter what the conditions are. Sexuality should be permitted only after age 18 between racially paired males and females only. Sexuality of any other form and at any other age is a perversion. Hence, of course, marriage is not to be permitted for lesbians and gays. Well, let's see what else. Oh, education should be guided by local government counsels. History texts should be censored and rewritten so as to indicate the excellence of the Reagan and Bush years and the corruptions of Democratic administrations in any form. Science teaching should be restricted to the faithful discussion of Creationism only and reference to evolution, Darwin, etc should be eliminated. Current scientists should be looked upon with the greatest suspicion, especially when they attempt to fill their pockets with huge research grants relating to fabrications about "climate change" and "atmospheric warming." Muslims should all be banished from the US and English should be the only and official language of this country --- speak English or get out.

This is the "short list" on the social agenda; I could go on. What is somewhat odd about this list is the fact that the 49ers, so to speak, see themselves as detesting government and worshipping freedom. Yet their entire social agenda requires a more pervasive government presence in order to repress those behaviors that they dislike and they have no respect for the freedom of people other than themselves. 

So I guess that is the problem and it's not a problem that can be easily solved.