House votes to restrict unions

Measure would curb bargaining on health care. The push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.


 Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO, said the union would fight the legislation “to the bitter end.” (M. McDonald for The Boston Globe)

Robert J. Haynes, AFL-CIO

By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff

Boston Globe | April 27, 2011

House lawmakers voted overwhelmingly last night to strip police officers, teachers, and other municipal employees of most of their rights to bargain over health care, saying the change would save millions of dollars for financially strapped cities and towns.

The 111-to-42 vote followed tougher measures to broadly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees in Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states. But unlike those efforts, the push in Massachusetts was led by Democrats who have traditionally stood with labor to oppose any reduction in workers’ rights.

Unions fought hard to stop the bill, launching a radio ad that assailed the plan and warning legislators that if they voted for the measure, they could lose their union backing in the next election. After the vote, labor leaders accused House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo and other Democrats of turning their backs on public employees.

“It’s pretty stunning,’’ said Robert J. Haynes, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO. “These are the same Democrats that all these labor unions elected. The same Democrats who we contributed to in their campaigns. The same Democrats who tell us over and over again that they’re with us, that they believe in collective bargaining, that they believe in unions. . . . It’s a done deal for our relationship with the people inside that chamber.’’

Yet one more betrayal by the Democrats. How many betrayals will it take for the American people to see the problem is systemic?  That the difference between the two parties is an illusion based on differences of style and levels of hypocrisy?

“We are going to fight this thing to the bitter end,’’ he added. “Massachusetts is not the place that takes collective bargaining away from public employees.’’

The battle now turns to the Senate, where President Therese Murray has indicated that she is reluctant to strip workers of their right to bargain over their health care plans.

DeLeo said the House measure would save $100 million for cities and towns in the upcoming budget year, helping them avoid layoffs and reductions in services. He called his plan one of the most significant reforms the state can adopt to help control escalating health care costs.

“By spending less on the health care costs of municipal employees, our cities and towns will be able to retain jobs and allot more funding to necessary services like education and public safety,’’ he said in a statement.

Last night, as union leaders lobbied against the plan, DeLeo offered two concessions intended to shore up support from wavering legislators.

The first concession gives public employees 30 days to discuss changes to their health plans with local officials, instead of allowing the officials to act without any input from union members. But local officials would still, at the end of that period, be able to impose their changes unilaterally.

The second concession gives union members 20 percent of the savings from any health care changes for one year, if the unions object to changes imposed by local officials. The original bill gave the unions 10 percent of the savings for one year.

The modifications bring the House bill closer to a plan introduced by Governor Deval Patrick in January. The governor, like Murray, has said he wants workers to have some say in altering their health plans, but does not want unions to have the power to block changes.

But union leaders said that even with the last-minute concessions, the bill was an assault on workers’ rights, unthinkable in a state that has long been a bastion of union support. Some Democrats accused DeLeo of following the lead of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin and other Republicans who have targeted public employee benefits. “In the bigger world out there, this fits into a very bad movement to disempower labor unions,’’ said Representative Denise Provost, a Somerville Democrat who opposed the bill.

Under the legislation, mayors and other local officials would be given unfettered authority to set copayments and deductibles for their employees, after the 30-day discussion period with unions. Only the share of premiums paid by employees would remain on the health care bargaining table.

Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association, said that, even if the bill becomes law, municipal workers would still have more bargaining power over their health care plans than state employees. “It’s a fair, balanced, strong, effective and meaningful reform,’’ he said.

Unions lobbied to derail the speaker’s plan in favor of a labor-backed proposal that would preserve collective bargaining, and would let an arbitrator decide changes to employee health plans if local officials and unions deadlock after 45 days. Labor leaders initially persuaded 50 lawmakers, including six members of DeLeo’s leadership team, to back their plan last week. But DeLeo peeled off some of the labor support in the final vote.

Representative Martin J. Walsh, a Dorchester Democrat who is secretary-treasurer of the Boston Building Trades Council, led the fight against the speaker’s plan. In a speech that was more wistful than angry, he recalled growing up in a union household that had health care benefits generous enough to help him overcome cancer in 1974. He said collective bargaining rights helped build the middle class.

“Municipal workers aren’t the bad guys here,’’ he said. “They’re not the ones who caused the financial crisis. Banks and investment companies got a slap on the wrist for their wrongdoing, but public employees are losing their benefits.’’

The timing of the vote was significant. Union leaders plan today to unleash a major lobbying blitz with police officers, firefighters, and other workers flooding the State House. Taking the vote last night at 11:30 allowed lawmakers to avoid a potentially tense confrontation with those workers, and vote when the marble halls of the House were all but empty.

Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.
http://www.boston.com/news/politics/articles/2011/04/27/house_votes_to_limit_bargaining_on_health_care/

To breathe the true air of freedom and democracy you need independent media lungs. Staffed with journalists and political observers not beholden to the status quo.
SUPPORT THE GREANVILLE POST AND CYRANOS JOURNAL TODAY.
DONATE WHAT YOU CAN!

____________________________________________

Make creeps like Kissinger and Palin miserable.

Read The Greanville Post by RSS Syndication (updates delivered every 4 days to your emailbox) and fortify your ability to fight back! Just click anywhere on Lady Liberty below and enter your email address.


The Lobby Cancer at the Core of American Politics

Lobby, Lobbification, Lobbified – An Analysis

By Lawrence Davidson | Part One (Originally posted on 16 April 2011)

THE BUSINESS OF INFLUENCE PEDDLING Few politicos personify the seamless corruption permeating the American political system than Tom Daschle, a onetime top Democrat who now works as an unregistered lobbyist with the tacit benediction of the Obama White House, while his wife plows the same dirty waters as a well-connected registered lobbyist.*

Lobbification is a word I have just coined for the corruptive process that bends politicians to the will of special interests–that is to the will of lobbies. The result of lobbification can be seen in the stilted and fawning behavior of the lobbified political brain. Politicians with lobbified brains become the obedient instruments of the lobbies which have captured their political souls. Below are a few examples of the results of lobbification.

The majority of the politicians who sit on the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee are victims of lobbification. Among the major lobbies that have, over the decades, carried out this corrupting process are the Zionist organizations in their various Jewish and Christian manifestations. In their present state, the lobbified minds of these committee members, so

appeared before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee. Two were retired IDF generals and one was Dore Gold, the president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Gold is one of those transplanted Americans who have chosen careers as Israeli spokesmen. (As an aside, he is also an Inspector Clouseau look alike). He served as Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations and political advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.  Among Gold’s dubious accomplishments was convincing President Clinton not to pressure Israel over the Golan Heights.  The Saudi Ambassador to the U.S., Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once described him as “simply hatred’s scribe.” Here is some of what Gold and his fellow Israelis told the Foreign Affairs Committee:

1. Israel is confronting a new diplomatic assault that could well strip it of territorial defenses in the West Bank that have provided for its security for over forty years…..”

2. “The 1993 Oslo Agreements envisioned a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with borders to be decided by the parties themselves and not imposed by international coalitions or by unilateral acts.”

3. “Traditional U.S. policy recognized that Israel is not expected to withdrew from all territories it captured in the 1967 Six Day War. This was enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242….”

4. “…the entire Middle East is engulfed in flames. Just as Israel faces complete strategic uncertainty…it is being asked to acquiesce to unprecedented concessions that could put its very future at risk.” Therefore, “…to agree to a full withdrawal from the West Bank and to acquiesce to the loss of defensible borders pose an unacceptable risk for the Jewish state.”

During this lament our Congressional Representatives sat there, in their collective lobbified frame of mind, and swallowed it all in as if it were gospel. This was completely predictable. The Foreign Affairs Committee is chaired by Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, an ardent anti-Castro Cuban American who has spent her political life doing two things: first, distorting our foreign policy toward Cuba so that no vestige of national interest can be found therein, and second, promoting a tactical alliance between reactionary Cuban American groups and the Zionists. Ros-Lehtinen has recently confirmed her lobbified status by demanding that Congress “make it U.S. policy to demand that the UN General Assembly revoke and repudiate the Goldstone Report.” She did this despite the fact that three of the four signatories of the Report have avowed its accuracy and continued relevance. The ranking Democrat on the committee is Howard Berman who has never been able to figure out who he should represent more diligently, his California district constituents or Israel.

Both these leading committee members clearly suffer from lobbification and most of the other standing members also display this condition to one extent or another. As a result, when it came to the discussion that followed the Israelis’ presentation, all the possible probing questions remained unasked. Here are some of them, figuratively addressed to Ambassador Dore, et. al.

1. What do you mean by “diplomatic assault,” “imposed by international coalitions,” and “unilateral acts”? Do you mean the rather feeble US and European suggestion that your country negotiate in good faith and cease its own series of illegal unilateral acts such as the ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem?

2. And how is it that you are now telling us that, for the last forty years, your “territorial defenses” have made you secure? For the past forty years you have been telling us how insecure you are! Are we to understand that your constant claim of insecurity was a gross exaggeration? Perhaps nothing more than an addictive frame of mind? Or has it been just a facade behind which you carry on expansion in violation of international law?

3. Why do you bring up the Oslo Accords? For the last few decades you have been telling us that they are dead letters, irrelevant to current circumstances. You seen to trot them out when they serve your purposes and cast them into oblivion when they do not. Also, are you not aware that in the past your country has violated these accords at will?

4. Is Israel’s determined refusal to negotiate rational concessions really a function of the assertion that the “entire Middle East” is allegedly “engulfed in flames”? If we simply go back to a period when there was no “complete strategic uncertainty” we find that Israel’s position on compromise was exactly the same as it is today. So isn’t this new concern really a contrived excuse to justify your country’s refusal to come to just and fair settlement with the Palestinians?

5. Why are you bringing up the possibility of “full withdrawal” from the West Bank as if it was a specter gazing over your shoulder? When is the last time the U.S. government or the European Union demanded this of you? Is not the present understanding of the final character of borders based upon the 1967 Green line one that includes mutually agreed upon and equitable land swaps? Is not this the recognized contemporary understanding of UN Resolution 242?

6. And what is this business of “defensible borders”? When was the last time your country’s borders proved indefensible to conventional military attack? Isn’t it true that, even without the West Bank, your borders have never been seriously crossed by such forces? Your vulnerability lies in your inability to counter guerrilla and terrorist attacks, and to prevent missile penetration. Ultimate security against these threats does not rest in a policy of colonial expansion but rather in an equitable peace agreement.

What a memorable and actually useful committee meeting it would have been if these or similar questions had been posed. But alas, the lobbified brain functions something like Israel’s apartheid wall. Meaningful questions about Israel and doubts about the real consequences of Zionism cannot easily get over or around the 9 meter high conditioning that is lobbification.

Part II – An Example From the U.S. Senate

The on-line magazine Politico reports tells us that “even as they push for huge cuts, 11 freshman GOP senators say the U.S. must continue to provide foreign aid to its strongest ally in the Middle East: Israel.” In a letter to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) the security conscious eleven stated, “as we work to reduce wasteful government spending….we must continue to prioritize the safety of our nation and the security of our allies, including Israel.” Only the thoroughly lobbified brain canadvocate cutting $500 million from federal programs for health and nutrition for women, infants and children and simultaneously insist on continuing to give Israel $ 3 billion a year– and, do so in the name of “prioritizing the safety of our nation”! The Senator who organized the letter to McConnell is Marco Rubio of Florida (a male version of Ros-Lehtinen) and he sits on what committee? The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of course. His lobbified state apparently makes it impossible for him to see the connection between our open-ended support of Israel, Israel’s ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, and our nation’s insecurity. It should come as no surprise that Senator Rubio has said that the U.S. must “stand with Israel without equivocation or hesitation” and cease pressuring Israel over its settlement policies.

Part III – Conclusion

As the approximately 206.8 million adult Americans go about their daily lives most probably do not realize that they, or at least the approximately 57% who bother to vote in federal elections, have placed into positions of power individuals who have been corrupted by lobby power. This is due to the fact that most Americans do not understand and/or pay attention to how their own political system works. Few and far between are the school “civics” courses that, in theory, explain its intricacies. And, once the Republicans get done gutting the education budgets, those remaining courses will most likely disappear.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is often the prelude to sudden destruction. It is not bliss to be ignorant of the corruption that is undermining your government . Lobbification is synonymous with just that –a dangerous form of political corruption. Our political system is riddled with it. It has been so for a long time and the situation is not improving. This condition has recently manifested itself in Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Ohio and a host of other states in the form of feverish acts of self-destruction. And, as we have seen, Congress has no immunity. Yet the citizenry goes blissfully about its business. To quote the immortal Samuel Johnson, “Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkling down the torrent of his fate? (Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2001, p. 411, No. 19). Perhaps it is so.

POST DATA ON TOM DASCHLE: QED

(Feb. 03, 2009), TIME Magazine intoned,

See members of Obama’s White House.)

new Middle East peace envoy who previously served as chairman of a law firm that has done lobbying and legal work for many clients in the region, including the leader of Dubai.

changing the culture in Washington.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1876550,00.html#ixzz1KloKEiQX

••••••

Lobbification Part II – An Analysis (23 April 2011)

In a piece titled Lobby, Lobbification, Lobbified (16 April 2011) I asserted that lobby power has corrupted the legislative branches of government particularly at the federal level. How and why this has happened needs further explanation. Most people point a finger at the corrosive impact of money and that certainly plays a pivotal role. It is extraordinarily expensive to run for any major office at either the state or national level, and increasing numbers of our candidates come from the super rich. Lobbies or special interests also supply a lot of the money a politician needs to fund repeated election cycles. However, the problem presented by special interests is still more fundamental.

I – The Structural Problem

The influence of lobbies and special interests is a structural part of our system and has been so since the founding of the nation. This being the case, the United States is not really a democracy of individuals. Rather, it is a democracy of competing interest groups or factions. In my book, Foreign Policy Inc. (U. of Kentucky Press, 2009) I coin the word “factocracy” to describe the real nature of American politics.

The country’s founding fathers were acutely aware of the nature of factocracy and they feared its influence. In his Farewell Address given in 1796, George Washington warned of “combinations and associations” which might succeed in substituting their own desires for “the delegated will of the nation.” James Madison dedicated his Federalist Paper number 10 to the issue of factionalism within the republican environment. He feared “men of fractious tempers, local prejudices or of sinister designs” who would “betray the interests of the people” by “intrigue” or by “corruption.”

Madison attributed the tendency toward factionalism to human nature. The pursuit of self-interest spurs faction formation and therefore its “causes cannot be removed.” So one is left with the task of designing ways to control it. Madison was of the opinion that the new born United States was a big enough conglomeration of groups that, if its governing institutions were properly arranged, the nation’s large number of competing interests would check each other. Also, the country was, in his opinion, territorially large enough that “those who may feel a common sentiment have less opportunity of communication and concert.” So, in his work on the nation’s constitution he built in representative bodies with what he felt to be sufficient numbers of delegates to make the domination of one or a few factions difficult and augmented this with checks and balances between different parts of the government.

Unfortunately, Madison’s efforts have failed. Technology solved the communication problem and powerful factions formed not only in the legislature but also outside of it. Lobbies and special interests concentrated on the particular aspects of policy that interested their members and became so numerous that one or another special interest now influences all important aspects of both domestic and foreign policy. Presently there are over 11,000 lobbyists in Washington DC and they spend about $3.5 billion annually to assure that their parochial interests stand in for the national interest. Indeed, it is hard to recognize the national interest amidst all the special interest clamor.

II – Just who are the constituents?

Here is another way to understand this phenomenon. One might ask, who are a politician’s main constituents? At election time there is no doubt that the voters play that role. At that time all politicians focus their speeches, media measures and other propaganda on the voters. The candidate who wins this information combat (please note that campaign information need not be accurate or objective) and best organizes voter turnout wins the election. However, after the election the importance of the voters temporarily recedes. At best the now elected politician will perform a holding action with the voters. He or she may establish local offices to hear voters’ complaints and needs. This office may even assist the voters in solving problems concerning the government. But these will be low end delegated tasks. Between elections the real constituency on which the politician focuses his or her personal attention are the special interests that can supply large donations. It is these constituents that make it financially possible to engage in the organizing and information combat that goes on at election time. As the system presently operates, electoral victory would be very difficult without the support of the lobbies. Thus, these between election times constituents are in very good position to strike a deal with the politician that will strongly influence his or her legislative voting and/or policy formulation behavior.

Sometimes there is an overlap between the special interests and the election time voter. For instance, in some states defense contractors such as Boeing or General Electric are major employers and Senators or Representatives from such states who vote to lower the budget of the Defense Department may be seen as working against the interest of both the corporation and its employees. That is, against the interests of a major campaign donor and a relatively large group of voters. It is obvious how hard it would be to operate against these interests. However, at other times the special interest may have nothing to do with the economic welfare of the state or district in question. Such a lobby may have simply struck a bargain that trades its financial donations and media clout for the politician’s legislative support. That is the case of the Zionists and similar lobbies.

III – The Zionist Modus Operandi

Here is how a special interest such as the Zionists might operate. Let us say you are a new Senator from some U.S. state that has only a small number of Jewish voters and but scattered pockets of Christian Zionists ones. You come to Washington, DC and soon thereafter are visited by someone from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). They explain that they can encourage both Jewish and Christian Zionists from around the country to contribute to your campaign fund and mobilize local media support for you often at their expense. As to the Jewish or Christian Zionist element among your voting constituents they will promise to get those voters out for you. In exchange, all you have to do is vote in a pro Israel manner in the Senate when required.

Chances are you know little about the Middle East in general and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict particular. Except, of course, you have grown up in the same pro-Israel informational environment as the rest of the American population. The conflict seems not to be a voting concern with the majority at home so taking up the Zionist offer apparently will not alienate anyone. So what do you have to lose? Even if you are one of the exceptional politicians who pay attention to complaints about Israeli barbarism and give them credence, and therefore are prone not to take up the Zionist offer, the consequences of declining might cause you to hesitate. For if you say no to the Zionists they simply go to your opponents. Not just to the opponents in the competing political party, but also to whomever is your competition in the next primary election. From wealthy and powerful potential allies the Zionists could instantly become wealthy and powerful potential enemies. And they have a known record of success at defeating those politicians who will not cooperate with them.

IV – Conclusion

In truth it is a Faustian bargain. Once you sign on with a special interest such as the Zionists they soon become a primary constituent of yours, not only between elections, but also at election time via their media and voter mobilization efforts. They soon become a central part of your team. You no longer look to the State Department for information about the Middle East or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Now all that comes from AIPAC and similar sources. Thus your deepening dependency on this lobby is not just financial but also informational. They have melded your world view with theirs. Congratulations, you have been officially lobbified.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lawrence Davidson is professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history. Mail: ldavidson@wcupa.edu

To breathe the true air of freedom and democracy you need independent media lungs. Staffed with journalists and political observers not beholden to the status quo.
SUPPORT THE GREANVILLE POST AND CYRANOS JOURNAL TODAY.
DONATE WHAT YOU CAN!
____________________________________________

Make creeps like Kissinger and Palin miserable.

Read The Greanville Post by RSS Syndication (updates delivered every 4 days to your emailbox) and fortify your ability to fight back! Just click anywhere on Lady Liberty below and enter your email address.


Playing TAPs

MORRIS BERMAN

Guilty as charged?

One thing I’ve noticed about “progressive” or left-wing analyses of American politics is an absence of any critique of the people who inhabit this great nation of ours. The government is always fair game, but there is some sort of mystique about The American People (TAP). Uttering this phrase, writes Fareed Zakaria, is tantamount to announcing a divine visitation; anything has the force of biblical revelation if it is ascribed to this mystical, all-knowing entity. Thus Noam Chomsky, for example, believes that there is a “democracy gap” between this (potentially) enlightened population and its evil masters; that popular consent has been “manufactured”; and that if we (= who, exactly?) could only remove the wool that is covering their eyes, they would reject the government and institute some form of democratic socialism. In a more generally populist vein, Michael Moore seems to believe something similar: Americans are inherently decent and rational, they’ve just been led astray.

And yet evidence for a “democracy gap” is quite shaky. True, Americans finally turned against the war in Iraq (if they even think about it anymore), but this happened only when it was clear that we were losing; in the beginning, they were all on board. And polls that claim to show, for example, that we want socialized medicine are extremely misleading, because polling results typically depend on how the question is phrased. “Should everyone be entitled to health insurance?” The answer will be (has been) an overwhelming Yes. “Would you be willing to be taxed for it?” Well No, not really. “Do you believe in socialized medicine?” “Arrgh! Socialism! Get thee behind me, satan!” Etc.

"A Mercedes in every garage, or bust!"

PERSONALLY, I suspect there are limits to the “manufactured consent” argument, because I believe that TAP really do want, in Janice Joplin’s words, a Mercedes Benz, and that this is their vision of the good life. In my forthcoming book, Why America Failed, I quote from George Walden’s aptly titled study, God Won’t Save America: Psychosis of a Nation: “The peculiarities of nations, good and bad, tend to reflect the temperaments and qualities of their peoples. As Plato remarked, where else would they have come from?” When my editor saw this, he wrote in the margin: “This is the turning point of the book.”

Locating the problem within the “soul” (such as it is) of TAP is of course not very popular among so-called progressives, because once that reality is admitted, it becomes clear that there is no fabulous future, socialist or populist or genuinely democratic, awaiting us. If it were merely a question of eliminating Reagan or Bush Jr. or Obama in favor of a truly humane regime, then we could retain our optimism—freedom is “just around the corner,” as the historian Walter McDougall once put it. But if the problem is 310 million people sitting around dreaming of the day they’ll have a Mercedes Benz, then you can kiss the optimistic vision goodbye: TAP are getting the government they actually want. The “wool” covering their eyes proved to be—their eyes!

As a result, even the most penetrating critiques of The American Way of Life omit any examination of TAP or play it down. William Appleman Williams, for example, does say at one point that in the nineteenth century, merchants, farmers, and artisans were all on board with the American imperial-expansionist program; but he doesn’t really develop the theme, because he still (1961) had some hope for a democratic socialist state. The best one can find on the subject are a few desultory remarks, such as are tucked away in the pages of Sheldon Wolin’sDemocracy Incorporated. This is an extremely important book, because it examines the nuts and bolts of how “The Matrix” arose, and how it operates; but for the most part, Wolin’s focus is on the elites, the ruling class, as the critical factor. However, if we gather his remarks about TAP all in one place, a more comprehensive (deeper and disturbing) picture of our situation takes shape as a result. I’ll list them in the order that they appear in the book; you see what you think.

►(Quoting from George Kennan, 1947): “The fact of the matter is that there is a little bit of the totalitarian buried somewhere, way down deep, in each and every one of us. It is only the cheerful light of confidence and security which keeps this evil genius down….If confidence and security were to disappear, don’t think that he would not be waiting to take their place.”

►(On Iraq): “…to support a war…that bears responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocents, reduced to rubble a nation which had done us no harm, and burdened coming generations with a shameful and costly legacy—without generating massive revulsion and resistance.”

►“The lesson of Hobbes and Tocqueville can be boiled down to a brief but chilling dictum: concentrated power, whether of a Leviathan, a benevolent despotism, or a superpower, is impossible without the support of a complicitous citizenry that willingly signs on to the covenant, or acquiesces, or clicks the ‘mute button’.”

►(On Iraq): “Does innocence mean not being implicated in wrongdoing such as torture of prisoners or the ‘collateral damage’ to hapless civilians? And is it that the citizens are innocent but not their leaders?…As citizens are we collaborationists? To collaborate is to cooperate; to be complicit is to be an accomplice.”

►(On the Bush “election” of 2000): “…an illegitimate president took office amidst scarcely a ripple of discontent.”

►“While 83 percent of Americans believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus, only 28 percent admit to a belief in evolution.”

►“What is democracy doing bearing the stigma of empire?….recall that the American citizenry has a long history of being complicit in the country’s imperial ventures. The imperial impulse is not a tic afflicting only the few….Foreign observers, such as Tocqueville [1831], were struck by the appearance of a new kind of citizen: mobile, adventurous, highly competitive, and often brutal.”

►(Quoting Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council): “In a general election, the candidate with the most hopeful message is going to win it. Most people in the U.S. want to be rich, they want to get ahead, and that’s why an opportunity-oriented message works.”

►“For their part American citizens are expected to support the project of imposing democracy [on the rest of the world] while remaining in denial of their own complicity in ravaging foreign populations and economies.”

►(On Iraq): “Fault is attributed exclusively to the White House, never to the citizenry for its unthinking support of the venture. If, by luck, the war had been won as quickly as the administration assumed…it would be, would ‘democracy’ have even blinked? Not only did the citizens endorse the president’s war by reelecting him; in 2000 that same citizenry watched supinely as the Bush team defied the electorate and achieved a political coup….Much as one is justified in blaming Bush and his coterie, one also needs to figure in the culpability, complicity, and apathy of the citizenry.”

►(On Iraq): “…there was the political loss of nerve among Democrats, the press, and the punditry, a failure so profound as to call into question the health of the political system as a whole. That failure extended to all but a minority of the citizenry; the vast majority waved an occasional flag and then, when possible, heeded the advice of their leader to ‘fly, consume, spend’.”

►“In 2006, two years after the lie of Saddam’s WMDs had been exposed, the percentage of Americans who continued to believe that there were such weapons in Iraq increased from 35 to 50, and a near majority believed in links between Saddam and al Qaeda, lack of evidence notwithstanding.”

This is all I could find in a book of 300 pages, but these quotes are enough to suggest that Wolin understands that there are limits to blaming the ruling class. TAP aren’t very far from the elites in terms of values or world view, as it turns out.

At the conclusion of the book, Wolin tries to suggest what it would take to get our democracy back. This kind of optimistic prediction is obligatory in today’s market: TAP wants to hear a solution, even if none exists. Hence after demonstrating, in extenso, that we are totally screwed, the author will conclude his or her discussion by pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the eleventh hour. To his credit, Wolin does this only half-heartedly; he’s far too smart to believe that we can turn our situation around. Thus he says that the recovery of democracy depends first and foremost upon TAP changing themselves, “sloughing off their political passivity and, instead, acquiring some of the characteristics of a demos. That means creating themselves, coming-into-being by virtue of their own actions.” How this miracle is going to occur is of course never spelled out, and in fact two pages later Wolin writes:

“While the project of reinvigorating democracy may strike the reader as utopian, it requires an accompanying, even more utopian project: to encourage and nurture a counter  elite of democratic public servants.” He didn’t quite write “when pigs fly” at the end of the book, but the implication is clearly there.

So there we have it: TAP exposed as complicitous in all these events, and in the actions of corporate and military elites. There is no “democracy gap,” in a word; the elites and TAP have essentially the same vision, and decency and rationality don’t figure big in it. Both have acted to create the America that we live in, the America that is now dying—by our own hand. And thus, as Wolin is reluctantly forced to admit, any talk of fundamental change, of a different sort of nation, is little more than fantasy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Morris Berman is well known as an innovative cultural historian and social critic. He has taught at a number of universities in Europe and North America, and has held visiting endowed chairs at Incarnate Word College (San Antonio), the University of New Mexico, and Weber State University. During 1982-88 he was the Lansdowne Professor in the History of Science at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Berman won the Governor’s Writers Award for Washington State in 1990, and was the first recipient of the annual Rollo May Center Grant for Humanistic Studies in 1992. He is the author of a trilogy on the evolution of human consciousness–The Reenchantment of the World (1981), Coming to Our Senses (1989), and Wandering God: A Study in Nomadic Spirituality (2000)–and in 2000 his Twilight of American Culture was named a “Notable Book” by the New York Times Book Review. During 2003-6 he was Visiting Professor in Sociology at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Dr. Berman relocated to Mexico in 2006, and during 2008-9 was a Visiting Professor at the Tecnologico de Monterrey, Mexico City.

©Morris Berman, 2011

[donation-can goal_id=’support-tgp-before-were-gone’ show_progress=true show_description=true show_donations=false show_title=true title=”]

Check out the best progressive political site on this galactic point!

If information is power, The Greanville Post is your self-defense weapon of choice

Read The Greanville Post by RSS Syndication (updates delivered every 4 days to your emailbox) and fortify your ability to understand the world as it really is and fight back! Just click anywhere on Lady Liberty below and enter your email address. See what the system doesn’t want you to know.



ARCHIVES: Chomsky on why the US got involved in Yugoslavia.

ARCHIVES: Bringing you materials you should have seen or read but didn’t the first time around.

[donation-can goal_id=’support-tgp-before-were-gone’ show_progress=true show_description=true show_donations=false show_title=true title=”]

Check out the best progressive political site on this galactic point!

If information is power, The Greanville Post is your self-defense weapon of choice

Read The Greanville Post by RSS Syndication (updates delivered every 4 days to your emailbox) and fortify your ability to understand the world as it really is and fight back! Just click anywhere on Lady Liberty below and enter your email address. See what the system doesn’t want you to know.