It is necessary to begin with an acknowledgment that the word, patriotism, is not ordinarily used as a pejorative, hence, would not easily be recognized as such. Naturally this has something to do with dictionary usage, but more – far more – for the way states prepare the minds and habits of their people. The soft term would be persuasion. The harder and more operative term is exploitation.

The weekend CounterPunch adaptation of a 2001 article by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, The Good War, Revisited, includes a quote from Charles Beard (1874-1948), a portion here re-quoted:

“In short, with the Government of the United States committed under a so-called bipartisan foreign policy to supporting by money and other forms of power for an indefinite time an indefinite number of other governments around the globe, the domestic affairs of the American people became appendages to an aleatory [uncertain; chancy] expedition in the management of the world…” (emphasis added).

The citizen as appendage is not an appealing metaphor, and yet it is not only taken but taken exceedingly well by most Americans. And if it was true when Beard said it, that we and what we do are mere appendages to a growing imperialism, how much more true must it be today. No matter. Dan Rather, media figurehead, expressed this American “condition” when he stated that George Bush just has to tell him where to line up and he’ll do it. Yeah, he said that. The guy who was so tough on Nixon (not really).

I’m just off a weeklong holiday trip involving some legs on Southwest Airlines. It’s easily my favorite airline and I enjoy the liberty they give to the flight attendants to act out their personalities, although I get the sense that much of their schtick originates in-house.

On one of the flights there were some young, uniformed military personnel. I had noticed in the pre-flight waiting area a young man and woman, both in camouflage fatigues, she with a large backpack. As we inched to the gate at the end of one leg, an attendant solemnly requested that all passengers remain seated while these – in rough paraphrase – brave men and women who have just been deployed overseas and will be fighting on our behalf so that we may remain free have the honor of exiting first. This request was greeted by some polite applause, and then a woman began singing God Bless America. Several seemed to join her but it quickly died out. And then the troops exited to more applause.

A scene like this (familiar to many readers) renders with clarity the excellent selling job the state has done to its “appendages” in pursuance of its power arrangements. It is at once maddening, sad, and tragic.

Maddening that so many people can’t (or won’t) see through a selling technique that, while cleverly done, shouldn’t fool anybody. Sad to witness the Dependent Mind, the mind given over to authority and orthodoxy. Tragic that the young will learn to hate, fight, and die, and cause the reciprocal.

And all at once to see how saturated the country is with a patriotism that is blind to its rotten core. That makes it useless to interfere with the flight attendant that they’re not fighting on our behalf and that only our own government can take away our freedom. That makes it useless to shout down the clapping and singing. That makes it useless to do anything to embarrass the young soldiers that are on the wrong end of all this who actually might bleed and die and never come back. How useless is this patriotism.

And how we respond to this bleeding and dying conforms to our political views about war-making. How are wars started and should it make a difference which side was the aggressor?

One response to this resulted in something known as Patriot Golf Day, after that darling creation of our legislature, the Patriot Act. As a life member (longevity, retired) of the Professional Golfers Association of America and one who still receives media from the association, I’m presented with some of the promotion associated with this particular day.

It began when Dan Rooney, golf professional turned F-16 fighter pilot in Iraq and just off his second tour, had an experience on a commercial airliner like the one just described, only more sobering. The captain’s voice over the intercom:

We have an American hero on board making his final journey from Iraq.

Killed by accident. A chain hoist striking him across the neck. Rooney waited with the other passengers and saw below on the tarmac the American-flag-draped coffin that had been removed from the plane. It was the first war coffin he had seen and it moved him to create a local Fallen Heroes golf tournament with proceeds going to the children of soldiers killed in the war. He quickly expanded it into the national Patriot Golf Day, with support from corporations and associations, amongst them my association, the PGA of America.

Rooney was no stranger to death. He had just never seen it up close. Speeding along at high altitude, supersonically and imperviously, while dropping bombs insulates one from what happens on the ground. The pain. The suffering. The coffins.

His response to the coffin on the tarmac in the rain and the pain of the family members might have taken a different trajectory. He might have wondered, for instance, who is to blame for this? Instead of counting only the lost American lives, he might have at least considered the infinitely more lost Iraqi lives, the more so because we went there. They didn’t come here.

Others have gone through similar experiences to his and come to different conclusions, among them Veterans For Peace, that publishes The War Crimes Times. The masthead:

We will abolish war crimes when we abolish war – which is a crime in itself

Any question of honor – honoring fallen heroes – if the word honor is to have any meaning at all, must refer to the question of goodness. Most good, least good, or plainly at the extremes, simply, good and evil. Does it matter which side started a war?  This is not a tough question. What American wouldn’t be able to answer yes, almost reflexively, if the US was not one of the sides? Patriotism can do that to you. It can make you misplace the blame. That’s the Dependent Mind.

The ultimate cynicism of the motivational state consists in forcing its soldiers into a position where their lives are at jeopardy and declaring them brave in advance.

Pin medals on those who fight; jail those who refuse. That’s the game in a nutshell. That’s how it works. Lily Tomlin once mused, what does it mean to be a success in a mediocre world? Following that, what does it mean to be honored by a country that has no respect for international law? To receive the adulation of fellow citizens whose reactions are the patriotically-induced equivalent of canned laughter? Like declaring soldiers brave in advance.

Until we begin to place the honor where it is most deserved – with Veterans For Peace and with the few, not the many, soldiers of conscience who refuse to serve, and Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers of conscience, and there are others, perhaps then we should recognize the honorable service of those that, like I said, “are at the wrong end of all this” and for whatever reason, and there are many, have participated in it and believed they were doing it for the right reasons. For this, we can and should presume their innocence.

James Rothenberg can be reached at:  jrothenberg@taconic.net

It’s satisfying to watch rats flee a sinking ship.  This is because onlookers knew the ship was doomed long ago, and swimming rats signify that the drawn-out tragedy is nearing an end.  A collective sense of relief is a natural response.

The rats who propped up the broken boat of Obamacare are a collection of liberal and labor groups who frittered away their group’s resources—and integrity— to sell a crappy product to the American people.

Those in the deepest denial went “all in” for Obamacare— such as some unions and groups like Moveon.org— while the more conniving groups and individuals—like Michael Moore— playacted “critical” of Obamacare, while nevertheless declaring it “progressive”, in effect adding crucial political support to a project that deserved none.

But of course Obamacare was always more barrier than progress: we’ve wasted the last several years planning, debating, and reconstructing the national health care system, all the while going in the wrong direction— into the pockets of the insurance mega corporations.    A couple progressive patches on the sails won’t keep her afloat.  It’s shipbuilding time.

It was painful to watch otherwise intelligent people lend support to something that’s such an obviously bad idea.  So it’s with immense relief that liberals like Michael Moore, labor groups, and others are finally distancing themselves from Obamacare’s Titanic failure.   Now these individuals and groups can stop living in denial and the rest of us can proceed towards a rational discussion about a real health care solution.

The inevitable failure of Obamacare is not due to a bad website, but deeper issues.   The hammering of the nails in the coffin has begun:  millions of young people are suddenly realizing that Obamacare does not offer affordable health care.  It’s a lie, and they aren’t buying it, literally.

The system depends on sufficient young people to opt in and purchase plans, in order to offset the costs of the older, higher-needs population.    Poor young people with zero disposable income are being asked to pay monthly premiums of $150 and more, and they’re opting out, inevitably sinking Obamacare in the process.

Those young people who actually do buy Obamacare plans—to avoid the “mandate” fine— will be further enraged when they attempt to actually use their “insurance”.   Many of the cheapest plans—the obvious choice for most young people— have $5,000 deductibles before the insurance will pay for anything.   For poor young people this is no insurance at all, but a form of extortion.

At the same time millions of union members are being punished under Obamacare: those with decent insurance plans will suffer the “Cadillac” tax, which will push up the cost of their healthcare plans, and employers are already demanding concessions from union members in the form of higher health care premiums, co-pays, deductibles, etc.

Lower paid union workers will suffer as well.  Those who are part of the Taft Hartley insurance plans will be pressured to leave the plans and buy their own insurance, since they cannot keep their plans and get the subsidy that the lowest income workers get.   This has the potential to bust the whole Taft Hartley health care system that millions of union members benefit from, which is one of the reasons that labor leaders suddenly became outraged at Obamacare, after having wasted millions of union member’s dollars propping it up.

Ultimately, the American working class will collectively cheer Obamacare’s demise.   They just need labor and other lefties to cheer lead its destruction a little more fiercely.

Surprisingly, most of the rats are still clinging to Obama’s hopeless vessel, frantically bailing water.  Sure they’ve put on their life preservers and anxiously eyeing the lifeboats, but they’re also preaching about how to re-align the deckchairs.

For example, in his “critical” New York Times op-ed piece, Michael Moore called Obamacare “awful”, but also called it a “godsend”, singing his same tired tune.   Part of Moore’s solution for Obamacare—which was cheered on in the Daily Kos— is equally ludicrous, and follows his consistently flawed logic that Obamacare is worth saving, since its “progress” that we can build on.   Moore writes:

“Those who live in red [Republican dominated] states need the benefit of Medicaid expansion [a provision of Obamacare]…. In blue [Democrat dominated] states, let’s lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange — a health plan run by the state government, rather than a private insurer.”

This is Moore at his absolute worst.  He’s neck deep in the flooded hull of the U.S.S Obamacare and giving us advice on how to tread water.

Of course Moore doesn’t criticize the heart of Obamacare, the individual mandate, the most hated component.

Moore also relies on the trump card argument of the pro-Obamacare liberals: there are progressive aspects to the scheme—such as the expansion of Medicaid— and therefore the whole system is worth saving.

Of course it’s untrue that we need Obamacare to expand Medicaid.  In fact, the expansion of Medicaid acted more as a Trojan horse to introduce the pro-corporate heart of the system; a horse that Moore and other liberals nauseatingly continue to ride on.

But Moore’s sneakiest argument is his advice to blue states to  “…lobby for a public option on the insurance exchange…”

Again, Moore implies that it’s ok if we are “mandated” to buy health insurance, so long is there is a public option.  But that aside, the deeper scheme here is that Moore wants us to further waste our energy “reforming” Obamacare, rather than driving it to the bottom of the sea.

Moore surely knows that very few people are going to march in the streets demanding a public option at this point; he therefore knows that even this tiny reform of the system is unachievable. He’s wasting our time.  Real change only happens in politics when there is a surge of energy among large sections of the population, and it’s extremely unlikely that more than a handful of people are going to be active towards “fixing” Obamacare— they want to drown it.

Moore’s attempt to funnel people’s outrage at Obamacare towards a “public option” falls laughably short, and this is likely his intention, since his ongoing piecemeal “criticisms” of the system have only served to salvage a sunken ship.

Instead of wasting energy trying to pry Obamacare out of the grip of the corporations, Moore would be better served to focus exclusive energy towards expanding the movement for Medicare For All, which he claims that he also supports, while maintaining that somehow Obamacare will evolve into Single Payer system.

Most developed nations have achieved universal health care through a single payer system, which in the United States can be easily achieved by expanding Medicare to everybody.  Once the realities of Obamacare directly affect the majority of the population and exacerbates the crisis of U.S. healthcare, people will inevitably choose to support the movement of Medicare for All, the only real option for a sane health care system.

Shamus Cooke is a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org).  He can be reached atshamuscooke@gmail.com 

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has closed down the uniformed unit that enforced abuse and neglect laws in New York City and was featured in the reality television show Animal Precinct, the Associated Presswrites.

Most of the remaining 17 ASPCA agents, who had guns, badges, and arrest powers, were laid off last month and their responsibilities left to the New York Police Department. Some animal advocates have long sought the change, saying the small unit could not keep up with the volume of abuse cases and sometimes took weeks or months to respond to calls.

[pullquote]One more sad example that in a disordered, corrupt society where public monies are wasted on wars and corporate pampering, the most basic necessities are sacrificed on the altar of “austerity.“[/pullquote]

ASPCA President Matthew Bershadker said the police department, with more than 34,000 officers, is better positioned to handle several thousand annual abuse complaints. Critics of the move said such cases will be a low priority for the NYPD, which has always had the power to investigate animal cases but does not have a unit dedicated to the task.