Monday, 6 August 2012
Wednesday, 18 July 2012
Sunday, 3 June 2012
The Nihilist Dilemma
In my earlier post 'Life, the Universe and Everything' I outlined my opinions on why people are superstitious. The inherent moral void we perceive in reality, I contend, is responsible for us filling that void with anything from Christianity to Hinduism to Scientology. Why do we do this? In short, boredom, we can't deal with our own meaningless as without any purpose in our lives we're incapable of surviving. Ideology at least deludes us into thinking we have some kind of grander purpose, whether that ideology is religion, nationalism, racism or simply being an avid football fan. Somebody I agree with on this subject is Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg who said the following on religion-
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "
To be fair though, I'd change this quote slightly to-
"With or without an ideology, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; and for good people to do evil and evil people to do good—that takes ideology."
Overall the point is that delusional, non factual belief systems, including religions, can cause people to abandon reasoning and perform terrible or wonderful things. Weinberg then goes onto say almost the exact same thing I've been saying, and I swear I only found this quote recently-
"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
Exactly, ergo we become delusional ideologues to try and make it meaningful. It seems this understanding of things may be on the right track if a Nobel laureate agrees with it. But now we're going to go one step deeper, what should we do with this newfound understanding if it is indeed true?
The first option is to follow the advice of someone who can put things far more eloquently than I, George Carlin, one of the greatest comedians ever, in this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o.
In case you don't watch it, he basically outlines how ludicrous religions are, and then gives us this advice -
'So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.'
Is this wise? Should a good nihilist choose to let himself be brainwashed, assuming that someone can even make that choice? This also brings us back to the old argument over whether it is wise, based solely on reason and not on faith, to believe in God. This is summed up in Pascal's Wager which states that to believe in God brings infinite reward if he (why not 'it', seriously?) is real and little downside if he isn't, while not believing in God would bring infinite suffering if he is real and little downside if he isn't.
The Wager seems to be as clear-cut as 2+2=4. But there are two main criticisms of it. Firstly, the fact that there are many religions and even variations within religions (are any two people's religious beliefs exactly the same? For instance by translating the Bible from Latin into English aren't you surely changing its meaning slightly?) and no obvious way to choose the 'true' religion. Secondly, what part of making a logical decision to simply save your own skin could possibly be worth getting into heaven for? Or for that matter, what part of simply swallowing your parent's beliefs when you were a child and never taking the time to question them makes you worthy of avoiding hell? Surely its just as likely that Jesus, if he was indeed the son of God, was actually testing our reasoning and intends to reward those that have rejected his ludicrous message of faith, as it is that he will reward those who have chosen to follow him by abandoning reason and relying on faith instead.
A further criticism of religion I'd like to add is the sheer impracticality of wholly abiding by most religions. As Jesus said, 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone', surely by the Bible's standards we're all going to hell? (I actually find this thought rather comforting, it has a certain inevitability about it that makes it pointless worrying at all).
So trying to become religious doesn't seem to be much of an option, what's plan B? The rejection of ideologies, including religions, entirely? So what purpose to life is substituted?
Lets examine two people who chose option B. What do Karl Marx and Ayn Rand have in common?
They both founded new ideologies based specifically on, if still the basic tenants that ideologies including religions have relied upon for centuries, a rejection of the notion of a God and any kind of faith and the replacing of getting into heaven with the goal of creating a utopia here on Earth.
Karl Marx may have championed communism and Ayn Rand libertarianism, two economic and social systems that couldn't be further apart on the issue of concentration of authority, but both of them agreed there was no God. Aside from that however, both chose very different ways of replacing him.
Karl Marx, probably still a fan of Christ's message though not a follower, foresaw an idealistic world where, basically, everyone cooperated with each other all the time. Competition (A.K.A. freedom, liberty or imperialism) was strictly taboo. This mirrors Christ's original message of 'love thy neighbour'. Except that Communism was an abysmal failure wherever attempts were made to implement it fully. Less socialist policies however, are often successful (like universal suffrage, healthcare and education) as they strike a good balance between providing equality (an even playing field and so preventing the strong from destroying their rivals instead of fairly competing with them) while still allowing competition. But economics is a different subject entirely to morality.
A possible reason for the failure of outright communist systems was that Marx tried to divorce the idea of loving thy fellow man unconditionally with the faith-based belief in God. Without thinking that they might get into heaven if they continued to act nice to each other according to biblical principles and in the absence of other deterrents to acting malevolently, people quickly lost their motivation to strive for success and equality. Facing this rebellion the Soviet Union began cracking down on dissent with astonishing ruthlessness from its very earliest days, and by the 1960s this combination of long-running state-sponsored terror and economic stagnation had brought the country to near collapse. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and soon, combined with the drain of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and possibly outside pressures, the USSR collapsed into turmoil. Secular humanism in its purest form, it seems, doesn't work, and inevitably, as far as history shows, leads to brutal totalitarianism of a kind even more ruthless than the heartless despotisms it has replaced.
As for Ayn Rand, she in my opinion took things a step further than Marx, and there is no doubt that the nightmares of Communism paved the way for the modern neoliberalism she was one of the strongest proponents of. She understood that you couldn't divorce devotion to a fictional God with humanism, for without the former the latter becomes illogical. She named her specific ideology 'Objectivism'.
So what does Objectivism mean? It's the opposite of 'subjective', as in 'of a subject' (i.e. a person). A subjective way of thinking is 'how someone thinks about something', an objective way of thinking is 'how something is/should be thought about'. So if someone gives their opinion on something it is subjective, while a statement of fact is objective.
But can anything be truly objective? Aren't we all different beings with different experiences and slightly different ways of thinking about things? This returns us to the original problem, the reason we delude ourselves is because the truth is impossible to accept. This also couples with the fact that we're emotional creatures, not mindless, immortal robots. So just to what extent can someone unabashedly accept that there are no inherent moral standards and reject everything but logic.
Ayn Rand it seems, had a fair crack at it. Source: http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
In 1928 a man named William Hickman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman, carried out one of the most brutal murders in American history. He kidnapped, raped and dismembered the body of a 12 year old girl named Marion Parker and when her father paid the $1500 ransom he dumped the remains of her body on the street right in front of her father while driving away. He was later arrested and sentenced to hang, dying in the gallows in 1928. What did Ayn Rand think of him?
Hickman famously said after being arrested that "What is good for me is right". Ayn Rand enthusiastically described this as "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard". She goes on to say that Hickman "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."
Hickman clearly remained an inspiration to Ayn Rand throughout her writing career. She said of the main protagonist of her book The Fountainhead, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world."
In possibly her starkest statement she said Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man. There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to be happy."
So what does Ayn Rand put in the place of our delusions of meaning?
Hedonism, in as pure a form as possible. She is doing one better than Karl Marx here, not only is she saying morality is a delusion that doesn't exist, but we shouldn't even try and emulate it. However, while millions of innocents may have died in the communist's quest to create their socialist utopia, Ayn Rand's side of the political isle is unfortunately just as guilty of genocide. Communism may have killed 100 million people during the 20th century, but total deaths due to war and genocide that century totalled about 200 million. What killed the other 100 million people? In a word - capitalism (broadly defined as any ruthless seeking of personal profit, so this includes colonialism, imperialism and fascism). The Belgian Congo, the World Wars and all manner of ethnic and religious conflicts were the tragedies that launched communism in the first place. What a vicious ideological cycle.
Taking a look at fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany, they in a way very closely resemble the totalitarian socialist societies they so dearly hated. Both kinds of dictatorships were driven not just by typical greed, but by an ideological agenda that in their eyes reduced their victims to the status of being sub-human. You could perhaps divide the entire history of ideological conflict, including all religious wars, into two groups, the hedonists and the utilitarianists. Groups like Muslims, Colonialists and Fascists tend to fall into the former category and Christians, Buddhists and Communists into the latter. Regardless of which side they were on, the more devout their ideological beliefs, then generally speaking the worse the conflicts they initiated.
So, it seems the key decision we have to make isn't really what religion we believe in or god we worship, its whether we're angels or demons. Religions are merely childish fantasies destined to collapse once attacked by sufficient logic compared to the grander ideological debate. Do we really have to pick a side to give our lives meaning or not?
While World War Two saw an epic showdown between communist and fascist regimes, there was of course a third faction that disliked both - Democracies. Where on the ideological spectrum do these complex political systems sit? Well hopefully near the middle, in fact as close to the middle as possible. The power of corporations should be kept in balance with that of unions. Employers with employees. The state with the individual. Just as the Earth orbits the sun in an ideal 'Goldilocks zone' that is neither too cold nor too hot, the most successful societies throughout history have typically steered clear of ideological extremes. On the right, ruthless tyrants like Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler have quickly built immensely powerful empires only for them to collapse almost overnight, in historical terms. On the left, ultra-religious medieval Christian Europe and the Communist Soviet Union remained locked in dark ages for generations. Societies need to be dynamic, yet stable enough that specialization in the economy can occur to a fair extent.
So to get back to my initial premise, how should people act to give their lives meaning? Left, right or centre?
I'd say, and have tried to abide by this premise for some time now, that the centre is by far the best place to hang out, and this is probably not as boring as you'd think. It is for instance, much trickier to determine exactly where the centre is. Heading to the left or right is easily done, just keep heading there. It’s not like ruthlessness or compassion have set limits, are they not obviously asymptotes? The centre however has no set point, and it can be very hard to determine who and what lies on either side of it. Is Barack Obama a left or right leaning politician for instance? If you ask your average Teabagger they'll adamantly proclaim his socialist tendencies, but if you ask any real socialists they'll say he's just as beholden to corporate America as Bush was. This is what makes being a centrist politician interesting, its more challenging, and thus potentially more meaningful. Bill Clinton, setting up camp in the Whitehouse just after the end of the long ideological confrontation that was the Cold War, talked of a 'third way' in politics besides liberalism and conservatism. A practical middle ground midway between the extremes and the genocidal behaviour they have so often precipitated.
So what's it gonna be? Rand, Marx or Clinton?
"With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion. "
To be fair though, I'd change this quote slightly to-
"With or without an ideology, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; and for good people to do evil and evil people to do good—that takes ideology."
Overall the point is that delusional, non factual belief systems, including religions, can cause people to abandon reasoning and perform terrible or wonderful things. Weinberg then goes onto say almost the exact same thing I've been saying, and I swear I only found this quote recently-
"The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."
Exactly, ergo we become delusional ideologues to try and make it meaningful. It seems this understanding of things may be on the right track if a Nobel laureate agrees with it. But now we're going to go one step deeper, what should we do with this newfound understanding if it is indeed true?
The first option is to follow the advice of someone who can put things far more eloquently than I, George Carlin, one of the greatest comedians ever, in this video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o.
In case you don't watch it, he basically outlines how ludicrous religions are, and then gives us this advice -
'So I've been praying to Joe for about a year now. And I noticed something. I noticed that all the prayers I used to offer to God, and all the prayers I now offer to Joe Pesci, are being answered at about the same 50% rate. Half the time I get what I want, half the time I don't. Same as God, 50-50. Same as the four-leaf clover and the horseshoe, the wishing well and the rabbit's foot, same as the Mojo Man, same as the Voodoo Lady who tells you your fortune by squeezing the goat's testicles, it's all the same: 50-50. So just pick your superstition, sit back, make a wish, and enjoy yourself.'
Is this wise? Should a good nihilist choose to let himself be brainwashed, assuming that someone can even make that choice? This also brings us back to the old argument over whether it is wise, based solely on reason and not on faith, to believe in God. This is summed up in Pascal's Wager which states that to believe in God brings infinite reward if he (why not 'it', seriously?) is real and little downside if he isn't, while not believing in God would bring infinite suffering if he is real and little downside if he isn't.
The Wager seems to be as clear-cut as 2+2=4. But there are two main criticisms of it. Firstly, the fact that there are many religions and even variations within religions (are any two people's religious beliefs exactly the same? For instance by translating the Bible from Latin into English aren't you surely changing its meaning slightly?) and no obvious way to choose the 'true' religion. Secondly, what part of making a logical decision to simply save your own skin could possibly be worth getting into heaven for? Or for that matter, what part of simply swallowing your parent's beliefs when you were a child and never taking the time to question them makes you worthy of avoiding hell? Surely its just as likely that Jesus, if he was indeed the son of God, was actually testing our reasoning and intends to reward those that have rejected his ludicrous message of faith, as it is that he will reward those who have chosen to follow him by abandoning reason and relying on faith instead.
A further criticism of religion I'd like to add is the sheer impracticality of wholly abiding by most religions. As Jesus said, 'let he who is without sin cast the first stone', surely by the Bible's standards we're all going to hell? (I actually find this thought rather comforting, it has a certain inevitability about it that makes it pointless worrying at all).
So trying to become religious doesn't seem to be much of an option, what's plan B? The rejection of ideologies, including religions, entirely? So what purpose to life is substituted?
Lets examine two people who chose option B. What do Karl Marx and Ayn Rand have in common?
They both founded new ideologies based specifically on, if still the basic tenants that ideologies including religions have relied upon for centuries, a rejection of the notion of a God and any kind of faith and the replacing of getting into heaven with the goal of creating a utopia here on Earth.
Karl Marx may have championed communism and Ayn Rand libertarianism, two economic and social systems that couldn't be further apart on the issue of concentration of authority, but both of them agreed there was no God. Aside from that however, both chose very different ways of replacing him.
Karl Marx, probably still a fan of Christ's message though not a follower, foresaw an idealistic world where, basically, everyone cooperated with each other all the time. Competition (A.K.A. freedom, liberty or imperialism) was strictly taboo. This mirrors Christ's original message of 'love thy neighbour'. Except that Communism was an abysmal failure wherever attempts were made to implement it fully. Less socialist policies however, are often successful (like universal suffrage, healthcare and education) as they strike a good balance between providing equality (an even playing field and so preventing the strong from destroying their rivals instead of fairly competing with them) while still allowing competition. But economics is a different subject entirely to morality.
A possible reason for the failure of outright communist systems was that Marx tried to divorce the idea of loving thy fellow man unconditionally with the faith-based belief in God. Without thinking that they might get into heaven if they continued to act nice to each other according to biblical principles and in the absence of other deterrents to acting malevolently, people quickly lost their motivation to strive for success and equality. Facing this rebellion the Soviet Union began cracking down on dissent with astonishing ruthlessness from its very earliest days, and by the 1960s this combination of long-running state-sponsored terror and economic stagnation had brought the country to near collapse. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev came to power and soon, combined with the drain of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s and possibly outside pressures, the USSR collapsed into turmoil. Secular humanism in its purest form, it seems, doesn't work, and inevitably, as far as history shows, leads to brutal totalitarianism of a kind even more ruthless than the heartless despotisms it has replaced.
As for Ayn Rand, she in my opinion took things a step further than Marx, and there is no doubt that the nightmares of Communism paved the way for the modern neoliberalism she was one of the strongest proponents of. She understood that you couldn't divorce devotion to a fictional God with humanism, for without the former the latter becomes illogical. She named her specific ideology 'Objectivism'.
So what does Objectivism mean? It's the opposite of 'subjective', as in 'of a subject' (i.e. a person). A subjective way of thinking is 'how someone thinks about something', an objective way of thinking is 'how something is/should be thought about'. So if someone gives their opinion on something it is subjective, while a statement of fact is objective.
But can anything be truly objective? Aren't we all different beings with different experiences and slightly different ways of thinking about things? This returns us to the original problem, the reason we delude ourselves is because the truth is impossible to accept. This also couples with the fact that we're emotional creatures, not mindless, immortal robots. So just to what extent can someone unabashedly accept that there are no inherent moral standards and reject everything but logic.
Ayn Rand it seems, had a fair crack at it. Source: http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm
In 1928 a man named William Hickman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Edward_Hickman, carried out one of the most brutal murders in American history. He kidnapped, raped and dismembered the body of a 12 year old girl named Marion Parker and when her father paid the $1500 ransom he dumped the remains of her body on the street right in front of her father while driving away. He was later arrested and sentenced to hang, dying in the gallows in 1928. What did Ayn Rand think of him?
Hickman famously said after being arrested that "What is good for me is right". Ayn Rand enthusiastically described this as "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard". She goes on to say that Hickman "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should."
Hickman clearly remained an inspiration to Ayn Rand throughout her writing career. She said of the main protagonist of her book The Fountainhead, Howard Roark: He "has learned long ago, with his first consciousness, two things which dominate his entire attitude toward life: his own superiority and the utter worthlessness of the world."
In possibly her starkest statement she said Man "is man only so long as he functions in accordance with the nature of a rational being. When he chooses to function otherwise, he is no longer man. There is no proper name for the thing which he then becomes ... When a man chooses to act in a sub-human manner, it is no longer proper for him to survive nor to be happy."
So what does Ayn Rand put in the place of our delusions of meaning?
Hedonism, in as pure a form as possible. She is doing one better than Karl Marx here, not only is she saying morality is a delusion that doesn't exist, but we shouldn't even try and emulate it. However, while millions of innocents may have died in the communist's quest to create their socialist utopia, Ayn Rand's side of the political isle is unfortunately just as guilty of genocide. Communism may have killed 100 million people during the 20th century, but total deaths due to war and genocide that century totalled about 200 million. What killed the other 100 million people? In a word - capitalism (broadly defined as any ruthless seeking of personal profit, so this includes colonialism, imperialism and fascism). The Belgian Congo, the World Wars and all manner of ethnic and religious conflicts were the tragedies that launched communism in the first place. What a vicious ideological cycle.
Taking a look at fascist regimes such as Nazi Germany, they in a way very closely resemble the totalitarian socialist societies they so dearly hated. Both kinds of dictatorships were driven not just by typical greed, but by an ideological agenda that in their eyes reduced their victims to the status of being sub-human. You could perhaps divide the entire history of ideological conflict, including all religious wars, into two groups, the hedonists and the utilitarianists. Groups like Muslims, Colonialists and Fascists tend to fall into the former category and Christians, Buddhists and Communists into the latter. Regardless of which side they were on, the more devout their ideological beliefs, then generally speaking the worse the conflicts they initiated.
So, it seems the key decision we have to make isn't really what religion we believe in or god we worship, its whether we're angels or demons. Religions are merely childish fantasies destined to collapse once attacked by sufficient logic compared to the grander ideological debate. Do we really have to pick a side to give our lives meaning or not?
While World War Two saw an epic showdown between communist and fascist regimes, there was of course a third faction that disliked both - Democracies. Where on the ideological spectrum do these complex political systems sit? Well hopefully near the middle, in fact as close to the middle as possible. The power of corporations should be kept in balance with that of unions. Employers with employees. The state with the individual. Just as the Earth orbits the sun in an ideal 'Goldilocks zone' that is neither too cold nor too hot, the most successful societies throughout history have typically steered clear of ideological extremes. On the right, ruthless tyrants like Genghis Khan and Adolf Hitler have quickly built immensely powerful empires only for them to collapse almost overnight, in historical terms. On the left, ultra-religious medieval Christian Europe and the Communist Soviet Union remained locked in dark ages for generations. Societies need to be dynamic, yet stable enough that specialization in the economy can occur to a fair extent.
So to get back to my initial premise, how should people act to give their lives meaning? Left, right or centre?
I'd say, and have tried to abide by this premise for some time now, that the centre is by far the best place to hang out, and this is probably not as boring as you'd think. It is for instance, much trickier to determine exactly where the centre is. Heading to the left or right is easily done, just keep heading there. It’s not like ruthlessness or compassion have set limits, are they not obviously asymptotes? The centre however has no set point, and it can be very hard to determine who and what lies on either side of it. Is Barack Obama a left or right leaning politician for instance? If you ask your average Teabagger they'll adamantly proclaim his socialist tendencies, but if you ask any real socialists they'll say he's just as beholden to corporate America as Bush was. This is what makes being a centrist politician interesting, its more challenging, and thus potentially more meaningful. Bill Clinton, setting up camp in the Whitehouse just after the end of the long ideological confrontation that was the Cold War, talked of a 'third way' in politics besides liberalism and conservatism. A practical middle ground midway between the extremes and the genocidal behaviour they have so often precipitated.
So what's it gonna be? Rand, Marx or Clinton?
Monday, 20 February 2012
The History of Democracy
First of all, I'd hardly consider myself a raging leftie, but only as modestly left-leaning. Just because I think young-earth creationists and climate change deniers are lunatics and that George Bush's invasion of Iraq was misguided and at least partially based on lies doesn't make me a member of the socialist alliance. I'd say the road to a fairer world is primarily through electoral success with the odd protest along the way rather than violent revolution. This is evidently the core of most modern leftist movements in developed countries at least. The right is, despite everything, quite similar. Sure they sometimes run a slicker propaganda machine (cough 'Fox News' cough) and the odd Norwegian Christian fundamentalist might go on a rampage, but neither side differs too wildly on their political methods. Overall violence is rare and the public discoure, however vitriolic, is generally decent.
The developing world is sometimes dramatically different. The recent Arab Spring has a definite populist tone. From Tripoli to Damascus people have called for the overthrow of brutal, often decades-old totalitarian regimes. The situation is of course complicated and varies by country, some of those regimes have long been backed by the US (Egypt) or are the result of earlier 'populist' and 'anti-western' revolutions (Libya) but every Arab country that has seen violent protests and civil wars of late has been fuelld by people power. The idea of 'the people' rising up against a dictator to create a newfound democracy is of course brilliant, but often carries a lot of baggage which can take generations of progressive change to eliminate. Even the founding fathers of the United States, who fought against King George III with all the passion of Libya's tribes and Islamists against Muammar Gaddafi, kept the draconian institution of slavery in their newfound country and more than a century would pass before women and ethnic minorities would attain equal rights, such as suffrage, with the rich, white, racist, tax-evading old men who founded America. One must not expect the Arabs to embrace democracy overnight, it took Europe two world wars and half a millenium to get it only kinda right. The Arabs haven't really done too bad a job so far when you think about it.
There was a time when the 'developed' countries of the world went though their own, and often far bloodier, periods of violent revolution. These have occurred from both the left and the right. The English Civil War in the 17th century would have to be one of the earliest examples, when the Parliament won the penultimate battle with the English Monarchy after centuries of power struggles. America and France were among several countries who endured similar revolutions in the late 18th century. By the beginning of the twentieth it looked like democracy was the way of the future. The world's most affluent countries were all relatively democratic and liberal (Britain, France, the US) or getting there (Germany, Italy) while Europe and Asia's old monarchies were in various states of decline (Turkey, Austro-Hungary, Russia, China). However, democracy came too late to save Europe's masses from the meat-grinder that was warfare following the industrial revolution. The sense of superiority European leaders inherited from centuries of colonial conquests was to be their undoing.
The aftermath of WW1 shattered the old imperial order. The Imperial governments of Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey collapsed and by 1920 it has been said that if you stood on the French border with Germany and looked east, the next country you'd see that was functioning effectively was Japan. Even in the more liberal west huge changes were brought about, most European Nations as well as the US gave women the vote after the war and talk of 'empire' became taboo where it had not just been excepted, but downright expected, a few years before. Nearly every country in the world took a dramatic turn to the left and nowhere was this shift more dramatic than in the old Russian Empire, which collapsed into five years of brutal fighting between the Communist 'Red Army' and the most conservative and disparate 'White Army' and its western backers, before it would be reformed in the 1920s as the Soviet Union. The trenches of the eastern front had instilled in much of the Russian populist a sincere anti-capitalist fanaticism that makes Fox New's inherent bias look genuinely 'fair and balanced'. In such a climate democracy, the best hope for populist revolutions, never stood a chance against such power-hungry individuals as Joseph Stalin.
Not everywhere was this shift to the left permanent, it was often made fleeting by anti-communist movements that had arisen out of the ashes of the old Imperialist regimes. In Italy Benito Mussolini's fascists soon became that Kingdom's 'saviours' when they, with the backing of Italy's elite, kicked out the Communists in the 1920s despite the latter movement's widespread support. This would later contribute to the Italian military's low morale and abysmal performance during WW2. Spain underwent a similar civil war in the 1930s, and Francisco Franco's wise decision to keep Spain out of WW2 kept his regime alive well into the 1970s. Only in Germany were the old imperialist dreams so successfully reawakened by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler. The lessons of the First World War, argued Hitler so passionately, were not that Imperialism was a bad idea but that a lack of Nationalist pride on the part of the German people, especially those 'vile Jews' and other untermenschen, had led to disaster. He rapidly prepared Germany's second bid for superpower status. Japan, also a rising industrial power, had similiar ambitions and a not so dissimilar worldview. Other factors such as the high unemployment and despair of the Great Depression only heightened global tensions further.
Thus, the stage for the Second World War was set. Whereas the first had been basically an imperialist struggle, a markedly right-wing affair declared and waged by rival, affluent power brokers and fought by the poor and working class from many nations, the second was fought along very different ideological lines. Instead of Imperial Germany in 1914 being scarcely different from the somewhat more democratic British Empire or poorer Tsarist Russia, the three countries by 1939 were ruled by radically different regimes whose power extended from fundamentally different ideologies and worldviews. The western world was basically politically centrist, a mix of corporate dominance, popular elections, military-industrial complexes and universal suffrage and education. Fascist regimes such as Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain leaned dramatically to the right, mocking the weaknesses of democracies and openly calling for the extermination, rather than the empowering, of the 'weaker' individuals of society. The Soviet Union, and later its communist acolytes around the world, from China to Cuba, leaned dramatically to the left calling for an end to the old Bourgeois system and a new world order emphasizing cooperation over virtually all forms of competition.
The Fascists had learned nothing from the First World War, and it would take the utter devastation of their homelands in the second to curb the more brutal political aspirations of Nationalism, racism, Imperialism and Colonialism once and, hopefully, for all. The Communists, blinded by the horror of the war to the importance of freedom alongside equality, had initially learned their lessons too well. Their social engineering and even more so their political repression in pursuit of their ideology would devastate the lives of millions over the next half century. Meanwhile the west, for all its flaws and eccentricities, had taken a much wiser course, and usually managed throughout the 20th century to navigate the narrow political path between blatant right-wing nationalism and full-blown left-wing socialism, something largely made possible by their relatively free and fair democratic systems.
The more recent political landscape of the 21st century seems harder to read, perhaps because we currently lack the obvious benefit of hindsight. The western world has in some ways moved further to the left. Increased spending on social programs, from public education to universal healthcare, social security to environmental preservation, indicates a continuing shift to the left. However the growing power of corporate interests and the widening divide between rich and poor evidences a shift back to the right. Only a few years after the collapse of most die-hard, supposedly left-wing governments with the dissolution of the Warsaw pact in 1991, a new generation of political polarisation, with growing extremes on both the left and right, seems to be emerging.
The current global financial crisis has certainly accelerated this process and curbed the growth of democracy over the past few years. Like the great depression in the 1930s, the economic turmoil of the 2010s may be looked back upon as one of the catalysts of major ideological conflicts in subsequent decades. While over the past two years there have been tentative signs of economy recovery, notably the dropping of the US unemployment rate from 10% in October 2009 to 8.3% at the start of 2012, these may turn out to be illusory in the long run. The income gap is still growing, promised reforms of the world's financial system to prevent another 2008-style collapse have not materialized, the cost of living in nearly every country is rising sharply and, perhaps most worryingly in the long run, the global debt crisis has worsened dramatically and no real solution is in sight. The bottom line is that the structural problems in the world economy that caused the crisis have not been solved. It is possible, I daresay even likely, that any apparent 'recovery' in the world economy in the next few years will prove fleeting and that by 2020 a second great depression may hit for real. Could the next step truly be a Third World War?
The developing world is sometimes dramatically different. The recent Arab Spring has a definite populist tone. From Tripoli to Damascus people have called for the overthrow of brutal, often decades-old totalitarian regimes. The situation is of course complicated and varies by country, some of those regimes have long been backed by the US (Egypt) or are the result of earlier 'populist' and 'anti-western' revolutions (Libya) but every Arab country that has seen violent protests and civil wars of late has been fuelld by people power. The idea of 'the people' rising up against a dictator to create a newfound democracy is of course brilliant, but often carries a lot of baggage which can take generations of progressive change to eliminate. Even the founding fathers of the United States, who fought against King George III with all the passion of Libya's tribes and Islamists against Muammar Gaddafi, kept the draconian institution of slavery in their newfound country and more than a century would pass before women and ethnic minorities would attain equal rights, such as suffrage, with the rich, white, racist, tax-evading old men who founded America. One must not expect the Arabs to embrace democracy overnight, it took Europe two world wars and half a millenium to get it only kinda right. The Arabs haven't really done too bad a job so far when you think about it.
There was a time when the 'developed' countries of the world went though their own, and often far bloodier, periods of violent revolution. These have occurred from both the left and the right. The English Civil War in the 17th century would have to be one of the earliest examples, when the Parliament won the penultimate battle with the English Monarchy after centuries of power struggles. America and France were among several countries who endured similar revolutions in the late 18th century. By the beginning of the twentieth it looked like democracy was the way of the future. The world's most affluent countries were all relatively democratic and liberal (Britain, France, the US) or getting there (Germany, Italy) while Europe and Asia's old monarchies were in various states of decline (Turkey, Austro-Hungary, Russia, China). However, democracy came too late to save Europe's masses from the meat-grinder that was warfare following the industrial revolution. The sense of superiority European leaders inherited from centuries of colonial conquests was to be their undoing.
The aftermath of WW1 shattered the old imperial order. The Imperial governments of Russia, Germany, Austro-Hungary and Turkey collapsed and by 1920 it has been said that if you stood on the French border with Germany and looked east, the next country you'd see that was functioning effectively was Japan. Even in the more liberal west huge changes were brought about, most European Nations as well as the US gave women the vote after the war and talk of 'empire' became taboo where it had not just been excepted, but downright expected, a few years before. Nearly every country in the world took a dramatic turn to the left and nowhere was this shift more dramatic than in the old Russian Empire, which collapsed into five years of brutal fighting between the Communist 'Red Army' and the most conservative and disparate 'White Army' and its western backers, before it would be reformed in the 1920s as the Soviet Union. The trenches of the eastern front had instilled in much of the Russian populist a sincere anti-capitalist fanaticism that makes Fox New's inherent bias look genuinely 'fair and balanced'. In such a climate democracy, the best hope for populist revolutions, never stood a chance against such power-hungry individuals as Joseph Stalin.
Not everywhere was this shift to the left permanent, it was often made fleeting by anti-communist movements that had arisen out of the ashes of the old Imperialist regimes. In Italy Benito Mussolini's fascists soon became that Kingdom's 'saviours' when they, with the backing of Italy's elite, kicked out the Communists in the 1920s despite the latter movement's widespread support. This would later contribute to the Italian military's low morale and abysmal performance during WW2. Spain underwent a similar civil war in the 1930s, and Francisco Franco's wise decision to keep Spain out of WW2 kept his regime alive well into the 1970s. Only in Germany were the old imperialist dreams so successfully reawakened by the Nazis under Adolf Hitler. The lessons of the First World War, argued Hitler so passionately, were not that Imperialism was a bad idea but that a lack of Nationalist pride on the part of the German people, especially those 'vile Jews' and other untermenschen, had led to disaster. He rapidly prepared Germany's second bid for superpower status. Japan, also a rising industrial power, had similiar ambitions and a not so dissimilar worldview. Other factors such as the high unemployment and despair of the Great Depression only heightened global tensions further.
Thus, the stage for the Second World War was set. Whereas the first had been basically an imperialist struggle, a markedly right-wing affair declared and waged by rival, affluent power brokers and fought by the poor and working class from many nations, the second was fought along very different ideological lines. Instead of Imperial Germany in 1914 being scarcely different from the somewhat more democratic British Empire or poorer Tsarist Russia, the three countries by 1939 were ruled by radically different regimes whose power extended from fundamentally different ideologies and worldviews. The western world was basically politically centrist, a mix of corporate dominance, popular elections, military-industrial complexes and universal suffrage and education. Fascist regimes such as Germany, Japan, Italy and Spain leaned dramatically to the right, mocking the weaknesses of democracies and openly calling for the extermination, rather than the empowering, of the 'weaker' individuals of society. The Soviet Union, and later its communist acolytes around the world, from China to Cuba, leaned dramatically to the left calling for an end to the old Bourgeois system and a new world order emphasizing cooperation over virtually all forms of competition.
The Fascists had learned nothing from the First World War, and it would take the utter devastation of their homelands in the second to curb the more brutal political aspirations of Nationalism, racism, Imperialism and Colonialism once and, hopefully, for all. The Communists, blinded by the horror of the war to the importance of freedom alongside equality, had initially learned their lessons too well. Their social engineering and even more so their political repression in pursuit of their ideology would devastate the lives of millions over the next half century. Meanwhile the west, for all its flaws and eccentricities, had taken a much wiser course, and usually managed throughout the 20th century to navigate the narrow political path between blatant right-wing nationalism and full-blown left-wing socialism, something largely made possible by their relatively free and fair democratic systems.
The more recent political landscape of the 21st century seems harder to read, perhaps because we currently lack the obvious benefit of hindsight. The western world has in some ways moved further to the left. Increased spending on social programs, from public education to universal healthcare, social security to environmental preservation, indicates a continuing shift to the left. However the growing power of corporate interests and the widening divide between rich and poor evidences a shift back to the right. Only a few years after the collapse of most die-hard, supposedly left-wing governments with the dissolution of the Warsaw pact in 1991, a new generation of political polarisation, with growing extremes on both the left and right, seems to be emerging.
The current global financial crisis has certainly accelerated this process and curbed the growth of democracy over the past few years. Like the great depression in the 1930s, the economic turmoil of the 2010s may be looked back upon as one of the catalysts of major ideological conflicts in subsequent decades. While over the past two years there have been tentative signs of economy recovery, notably the dropping of the US unemployment rate from 10% in October 2009 to 8.3% at the start of 2012, these may turn out to be illusory in the long run. The income gap is still growing, promised reforms of the world's financial system to prevent another 2008-style collapse have not materialized, the cost of living in nearly every country is rising sharply and, perhaps most worryingly in the long run, the global debt crisis has worsened dramatically and no real solution is in sight. The bottom line is that the structural problems in the world economy that caused the crisis have not been solved. It is possible, I daresay even likely, that any apparent 'recovery' in the world economy in the next few years will prove fleeting and that by 2020 a second great depression may hit for real. Could the next step truly be a Third World War?
Thursday, 27 October 2011
How to harness the Occupy Wall Street movement
A single angry rant by a little known on-air business news editor (and may I say, an absolute nutter) named Rick Santelli on CNBC on February 19th 2009 effectively gave birth to the Tea Party movement. Within 20 months it had morphed from a series of disparate protests into a political and electoral juggernaut. It ended up dominating the 2010 midterm elections and not only handed over Congress to the Repulican party, but scared its leaders so much the Republicans now find themselves wedged into an ideological gap so tight even most of Ronald Reagan's policies wouldn't fit. Similiarly, when a Tunisian fruit vendor, even more of a nobody, named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire on December 17th 2010 half the Arab world was soon thrown into violent revolution. Like many revolutions, in both these cases a single widely visible spark ignited an inferno of political and economic tensions that had been simmering for years.
Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th 2011. It was prompted, oddly enought, by a Canadian activist group called Adbusters and over the last few months has spread to hundreds of cities around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. While the Adbusters campaign and the initial demonstrations in Zucotti Park in New York were the spark that ignited it, mountaing economic tensions and continuing political deadlock in Washington are what have sustained it.
The protestor's greviances are numerous and, in my opinion, extensive and largely justified. Five mintues of research on the internet evidences just how vast the wealth gap in the US has become. An excellent article on this complete with detailed charts and graphs can be found here-
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
It is interesting to compare the scope and views of Occupy Wall Street's to its far-right cousin the Tea Party. Rick Santelli's rant didn't come from nowhere, it was sparked by the Wall Street Bailouts which started under George Bush (though you'll rarely see the Tea Party or their allies on Fox News admit this), the Obama stimulus package and the massive blowing out of the federal deficit from the second half of 2008 onwards. The economic blows the United States has taken recently have greatly shocked its population and deeply divided political opinion on how they should be fixed. This has, even when the Democrats controlled the Whitehouse and all of Congress from 2008-2010, led to bitter political partisanship which only worsened once the Republicans took over the lower house in January 2011. Congress's approval rating, which was already in the '20s before Obama took office, has now plunged to around 10-12%, a new record low and a far cry from the 40-60% approval it enjoyed towards the end of Bill Clinton's term in office.
Public frustration at this reversal in the fortunes of the American economy is inevitable, but the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have become fired up for often widely varying, and in some cases directly opposing reasons. Of course both these movments are diverse. The right has been criticising Occupy Wall Street since its inception for having a vague message. On the O'Reilly Factor a few weeks ago a guest described the protests thus, 'I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit power this is the sludge you'd get.' OK fair enough. But how many times have you seen Tea Partiers ranting on about Obama's birth certificate? Or the ground zero mosque, Bill Ayers, the EPA, planned parenthood, NPR funding, Obama's 'Tsars' and a dozen other nonsense 'controversies' proudly manufactured on Fox News, the latest of which is the 'Solyndra' scandal. All of this nonsense of course served the purpose of maximising Republican turnout at the 2010 midterms, and it almost makes me wish Democrats would better coordinate their efforts to stir up similiarly crazy outrage on the left.
Bill Maher, who I'm a big fan of, wittingly summed up the situation last week-
The most astonishing thing about the Tea Party these last two years has been how much power it has been able to wield despite its approval ratings with the general public varying between mediocre and abysmal. Here Gallup records the movement's rise and, lately, its fall-
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tea-partys-approval-rating-drops-to-new-low-new-gallup-poll/politics/2011/08/10/25290
As can be clearly seen, no more than 30% of American's ever approved of the Tea Party's political doctrine and actions, with most remaining largely impartial. It seems that, ouside of the thick shell of super-hardened bullshit that surrounds Fox News, the vast majority of Americans are basically sensible people and understand that whatever 'class warfare' and 'redistribution of wealth' is currently occuring in the US is primarily directed by the richest 1% against the poor and middle class, not the other way round. On a sidenote, here's Jon Stewart's summary from a few months ago of some of the most notable lies Fox has espoused since Obama became President-
(I apologise for the poor quality, videos on the Daily Show's website aren't available in Australia)
The Occupy Wall Street demonstators on the other hand have gained widespread support, consistently scoring a higher approval rating than the Tea Party in polls over the Past 6 weeks. Of course with the movement still in its infancy this could change, but the vast majority all Americans have expressed sympathy with their views-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/13/poll-occupy-wall-st-much-more-popular-than-obama-tea-party/
Anther interesting article here lists the major differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Its obviously from the point of view of an Occupier, but I think a majority of Americans would agree with most of this list-
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/15-major-differences-between-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party-protests/question-2245857/
Notable is how relatively populist and grassroots the Occupy movement really is. This contrasts with how quickly the Tea Party was hijacked by the corporate right-wing media way back in 2009, with any genuine concerns they had about government bailouts of the rich and ballooning deficits quickly turned into a crusade against the usual hyped-up straw man threasts posed by socialism, atheism, environmentalism and political correctness. However given how timid most Democrats have been in supporting left-wing causes in recent years, it is unlikely that Washington insiders will be running the show where Occupy Wall Street is concerned compared to how warped the Tea Party's goals have become. The Wall Street Bailouts prompted the formation of the Tea Party (i.e. the government's initial response to the problems poised by the global financial crisis) while Occupy Wall Street's response has been more delayed, and it only appeared once efforts to solve the United State's deficit problems stalled with what little was accomplished with the deficit reduction deal congress passed several months ago. This could be taken as a further sign of the movement's grassroots authenticity and its embodiment of people's immense frustration with Washington.
As for who is to blame for the massive debt the US currently owes, this chart lays things out quite clearly-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As can be seen, at the end of Bill Clinton's term in office US federal government spending was only 18% of GDP while 21% of GDP was taxed, creating a large budget surplus which would have been very handy in paying off the debt as Clinton had started to do. Yet by the start of Obama's term in office in January 2009 the amounts of GDP spent and taxed by the federal government had reversed, with spending now at 21% of GDP and taxes at only 18%. That's a reversal of 6% of GDP or about $800 billion thanks to two wars, the continuing expansion of entitlement spending and massive and unnecessary tax cuts across the board. Then towards the end of 2008 the global financial crisis hits and combined with stimulus spending (40% of which was Republican tax cuts by the way), taxation decreases further to just 15% of GDP (yeah, because Obama's a socialist who increased taxes...?) while spending, mainly due to increased unemployment benefits and welfare spending due to the soaring unemployment rate, increases to 24%. This is again an increase in the annual deficit of 6% of GDP which is only partly Obama's fault, and had he been able to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the end of 2010 and end other tax breaks as he's been urging congress to do for the past three years we wouldn't be in as dire a fix as we are now. Mostly for these reasons I'd maintain that the Occupy protestors have much more valid complaints to make about the actions of Washington and Wall Street over the past decade than the Tea Party's hype. While I'd agree that entitlements need to be reformed, the US's budget woes are overwhelmingly more a revenue problem than a spending problem. Over the past two years we should have passed a deficit reduction deal similiar to Ronald Reagan's in 1982, which was made up of about 80% revenue increases and 20% spending cuts. Don't belive me? Have a look at this-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-budget-deals-of-reagan-bush-clinton-and-obama-in-one-chart/2011/07/06/gIQA98w11H_blog.html
The tenacity and dedication of the Occupy protestors, peacefully resisting forceful actions by governments to disband their encampments, has likely gained them more public support then they've lost due to the messy and violent manner in which the protests have sometimes been broken up. A dissenting voice to this view is George Will (a notable right-leaning media personality) who said something strange the other week-
“I wish for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators a long life and ample publicity, for two reasons. I think they do represent the spirit and intellect of the American left, but also I remember the 1960s. We had four years of demonstrations like this leading up to 1968, when the Nixon-Wallace vote was 57 percent, the country reacting against the demonstrators and the Republicans went on to win five of the next six presidential elections.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/george-will-occupy-wall-street-represents-the-spirit-and-intellect-of-the-american-left/
Personally, I think this is fantasy. It is another example of how distorted a worldview the Republicans really have. Are they really still blaming the loss of the Vietnam War on a bunch of dirty hippies complaining about it back at home? Does George Will not realise that support for the Vietnam War plunged from a modest 52% in August 1965 to a dismal 28% by May 1971? Also that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and even George Bush Snr. were idealogically about as right-wing as say, Barack Obama?
At the moment, the Occupy Wall Street movement is at a tipping point. Since the protests began in September many cities across the US have begun running out of patience with the demonstrator's continued presence. Just this week in several cities, notably Oakland and Atlanta, local governments have broken up the encampments by force, not without casualties. Often this use of force has been justified by saying that the protestors have 'made their point'. While the doggedness of the protestors has largely been a virtue until now, the public could tire of the 'occupying' theme before long, especially given the sheer inconvenience to local residents some of the larger protests have entailed. The question however, is how can the movement continue in a form that doesn't heighten tensions with the authorities further but isn't seen as a retreat and the end of the entire campaign?
I'd suggest taking a leaf out of the Tea Party's book and taking their campaign model to heart. Married with genuine populism, it could alter the nature of public debate in the US over the next few years even more dramatically than the Tea Party has over the last two. Lets take a look at what they did-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America
Emulating the example of the Republican's 1994 midterms victory, which was notable for its 'Contract with America' championed by then Republican congressman Newt Gingrich. In 2010 the Republicans did it again with their 'Contract from America'. It is notable for its simplicity, how extraordinarily far-right its positions are, and the grassroots process by which it came about. It started with the creation of a website in mid-2009, just a few months after the Tea Party began, where any Tea Party activists could make suggestions for the 'Contract'. After a few months of this, during which the it received significant press coverage, hundreds of thousands of people had voted on the suggested ideas. Finally, with the cooperation of various conservative advocacy groups and Republicans in congress, the most popular ideas were presented at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2010 and voted on, leaving a list of the top ten which were soon basically adopted by the mainstream Republican Party and continue to be the basis for their policies today.
That my friends, is how you get things done in a democracy. Protesting can be very useful in getting a point across, but without proper coordination even a politically popular movement can struggle to get off the ground. It is also notable that during and after this whole process and leading up to the 2010 midterms Tea Party protests continued nationwide (culminating in the 'Restoring Honor Rally' in Washington D.C. in August 2010), so don't worry, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to protest against corporate greed in future. If you go to the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page (which by the way recently passed 100,000 likes) one of the notes on the page, titled 'Demands' lists just that, a list of demands that appears to have been written up by a rather small group of activists. At the bottom of the note it urges you to 'Demand and Distribute' the list. This method of doing things seems completely backwards, people should not be being asked to distribute those demands, but to contribute to them.
I'd suggest organising, starting right now, a major Progressive Political Action Conference early next year. Just as the Republicans are nominating which lunatic candidate they want to take on Obama next November, progressive activists countrywide can be voting on a platform for the Democrats and, hopefully, President Obama to embrace later that year. Just as the Tea Party formed their own Congressional Caucus which after the midterms came to include 62 members of the House and 4 senators, Occupy Wall Street could either form its own 'Occupy' caucus of expand the already existing Progressive Caucus. In the meantime we should be taking votes, hopefully with millions of people participating over the course of a few months, on what concrete policy objectives Occupy Wall Street seeks to achieve. The 'occupation' of city centre's across the county needn't end completely, but can take place intermittently. Occupy them on the weekends for instance, camping overnight from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. The Tea Party over the last two years has staged its biggest protests, with tens of thousands of people attending in some cities, on Tax day, April 15th. We need to choose a day, or several days, for the Occupy protests to flex their muscle fully over the next year. May I suggest September 15, the anniversary of Lehman Brother's collapse in 2008? Or August 27th, the day of the Republican's National Convention next year? All that is needed is several days next year when millions of Americans can briefly occupy every major city centre in the country, and even more importantly 'occupy' the attention of the media and everyone in Washington.
One thing everyone supporting Occupy Wall Street should remember is that this isn't quite the Arab Spring. The US may have fallen to 17th place on the Democracy Index behind the Czech Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#2010_rankings, but it is still, despite the hype, a full democracy. A people's revolt may be quite badly needed against Wall Street, the tax-evading rich and their cronies in Washington, the military-industrial complex, the Pharmaceutical lobby, the Prison-industrial complex and the political paralysis in Washington. But revolts needn't be violent, lets give the political process one more chance shall we? And this time, without Wall Street and Washington hijacking and running the show, maybe we can get some serious things done. We need to send out a message to Fox News, the Republican party and every other anarchist conservative stain on the American dream today. Lets make them end up regretting how far they've pushed the American people, and hopefully Occupy Wall Street will be looked back on by historians as a genuine once in a generation people's revolt by the dispossessed many against the despotic few, before things got too out of hand and the United State's risked slipping into a state of stagnation and decline.
Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th 2011. It was prompted, oddly enought, by a Canadian activist group called Adbusters and over the last few months has spread to hundreds of cities around the world, especially in the United States and Europe. While the Adbusters campaign and the initial demonstrations in Zucotti Park in New York were the spark that ignited it, mountaing economic tensions and continuing political deadlock in Washington are what have sustained it.
The protestor's greviances are numerous and, in my opinion, extensive and largely justified. Five mintues of research on the internet evidences just how vast the wealth gap in the US has become. An excellent article on this complete with detailed charts and graphs can be found here-
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
It is interesting to compare the scope and views of Occupy Wall Street's to its far-right cousin the Tea Party. Rick Santelli's rant didn't come from nowhere, it was sparked by the Wall Street Bailouts which started under George Bush (though you'll rarely see the Tea Party or their allies on Fox News admit this), the Obama stimulus package and the massive blowing out of the federal deficit from the second half of 2008 onwards. The economic blows the United States has taken recently have greatly shocked its population and deeply divided political opinion on how they should be fixed. This has, even when the Democrats controlled the Whitehouse and all of Congress from 2008-2010, led to bitter political partisanship which only worsened once the Republicans took over the lower house in January 2011. Congress's approval rating, which was already in the '20s before Obama took office, has now plunged to around 10-12%, a new record low and a far cry from the 40-60% approval it enjoyed towards the end of Bill Clinton's term in office.
Public frustration at this reversal in the fortunes of the American economy is inevitable, but the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street have become fired up for often widely varying, and in some cases directly opposing reasons. Of course both these movments are diverse. The right has been criticising Occupy Wall Street since its inception for having a vague message. On the O'Reilly Factor a few weeks ago a guest described the protests thus, 'I think if you put every single left-wing cause into a blender and hit power this is the sludge you'd get.' OK fair enough. But how many times have you seen Tea Partiers ranting on about Obama's birth certificate? Or the ground zero mosque, Bill Ayers, the EPA, planned parenthood, NPR funding, Obama's 'Tsars' and a dozen other nonsense 'controversies' proudly manufactured on Fox News, the latest of which is the 'Solyndra' scandal. All of this nonsense of course served the purpose of maximising Republican turnout at the 2010 midterms, and it almost makes me wish Democrats would better coordinate their efforts to stir up similiarly crazy outrage on the left.
Bill Maher, who I'm a big fan of, wittingly summed up the situation last week-
The most astonishing thing about the Tea Party these last two years has been how much power it has been able to wield despite its approval ratings with the general public varying between mediocre and abysmal. Here Gallup records the movement's rise and, lately, its fall-
http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/tea-partys-approval-rating-drops-to-new-low-new-gallup-poll/politics/2011/08/10/25290
As can be clearly seen, no more than 30% of American's ever approved of the Tea Party's political doctrine and actions, with most remaining largely impartial. It seems that, ouside of the thick shell of super-hardened bullshit that surrounds Fox News, the vast majority of Americans are basically sensible people and understand that whatever 'class warfare' and 'redistribution of wealth' is currently occuring in the US is primarily directed by the richest 1% against the poor and middle class, not the other way round. On a sidenote, here's Jon Stewart's summary from a few months ago of some of the most notable lies Fox has espoused since Obama became President-
(I apologise for the poor quality, videos on the Daily Show's website aren't available in Australia)
The Occupy Wall Street demonstators on the other hand have gained widespread support, consistently scoring a higher approval rating than the Tea Party in polls over the Past 6 weeks. Of course with the movement still in its infancy this could change, but the vast majority all Americans have expressed sympathy with their views-
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/10/13/poll-occupy-wall-st-much-more-popular-than-obama-tea-party/
Anther interesting article here lists the major differences between the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. Its obviously from the point of view of an Occupier, but I think a majority of Americans would agree with most of this list-
http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/15-major-differences-between-occupy-wall-street-and-the-tea-party-protests/question-2245857/
Notable is how relatively populist and grassroots the Occupy movement really is. This contrasts with how quickly the Tea Party was hijacked by the corporate right-wing media way back in 2009, with any genuine concerns they had about government bailouts of the rich and ballooning deficits quickly turned into a crusade against the usual hyped-up straw man threasts posed by socialism, atheism, environmentalism and political correctness. However given how timid most Democrats have been in supporting left-wing causes in recent years, it is unlikely that Washington insiders will be running the show where Occupy Wall Street is concerned compared to how warped the Tea Party's goals have become. The Wall Street Bailouts prompted the formation of the Tea Party (i.e. the government's initial response to the problems poised by the global financial crisis) while Occupy Wall Street's response has been more delayed, and it only appeared once efforts to solve the United State's deficit problems stalled with what little was accomplished with the deficit reduction deal congress passed several months ago. This could be taken as a further sign of the movement's grassroots authenticity and its embodiment of people's immense frustration with Washington.
As for who is to blame for the massive debt the US currently owes, this chart lays things out quite clearly-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Revenue_and_Expense_to_GDP_Chart_1993_-_2008.png
As can be seen, at the end of Bill Clinton's term in office US federal government spending was only 18% of GDP while 21% of GDP was taxed, creating a large budget surplus which would have been very handy in paying off the debt as Clinton had started to do. Yet by the start of Obama's term in office in January 2009 the amounts of GDP spent and taxed by the federal government had reversed, with spending now at 21% of GDP and taxes at only 18%. That's a reversal of 6% of GDP or about $800 billion thanks to two wars, the continuing expansion of entitlement spending and massive and unnecessary tax cuts across the board. Then towards the end of 2008 the global financial crisis hits and combined with stimulus spending (40% of which was Republican tax cuts by the way), taxation decreases further to just 15% of GDP (yeah, because Obama's a socialist who increased taxes...?) while spending, mainly due to increased unemployment benefits and welfare spending due to the soaring unemployment rate, increases to 24%. This is again an increase in the annual deficit of 6% of GDP which is only partly Obama's fault, and had he been able to reverse the Bush tax cuts for the rich at the end of 2010 and end other tax breaks as he's been urging congress to do for the past three years we wouldn't be in as dire a fix as we are now. Mostly for these reasons I'd maintain that the Occupy protestors have much more valid complaints to make about the actions of Washington and Wall Street over the past decade than the Tea Party's hype. While I'd agree that entitlements need to be reformed, the US's budget woes are overwhelmingly more a revenue problem than a spending problem. Over the past two years we should have passed a deficit reduction deal similiar to Ronald Reagan's in 1982, which was made up of about 80% revenue increases and 20% spending cuts. Don't belive me? Have a look at this-
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/the-budget-deals-of-reagan-bush-clinton-and-obama-in-one-chart/2011/07/06/gIQA98w11H_blog.html
The tenacity and dedication of the Occupy protestors, peacefully resisting forceful actions by governments to disband their encampments, has likely gained them more public support then they've lost due to the messy and violent manner in which the protests have sometimes been broken up. A dissenting voice to this view is George Will (a notable right-leaning media personality) who said something strange the other week-
“I wish for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators a long life and ample publicity, for two reasons. I think they do represent the spirit and intellect of the American left, but also I remember the 1960s. We had four years of demonstrations like this leading up to 1968, when the Nixon-Wallace vote was 57 percent, the country reacting against the demonstrators and the Republicans went on to win five of the next six presidential elections.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/george-will-occupy-wall-street-represents-the-spirit-and-intellect-of-the-american-left/
Personally, I think this is fantasy. It is another example of how distorted a worldview the Republicans really have. Are they really still blaming the loss of the Vietnam War on a bunch of dirty hippies complaining about it back at home? Does George Will not realise that support for the Vietnam War plunged from a modest 52% in August 1965 to a dismal 28% by May 1971? Also that Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and even George Bush Snr. were idealogically about as right-wing as say, Barack Obama?
At the moment, the Occupy Wall Street movement is at a tipping point. Since the protests began in September many cities across the US have begun running out of patience with the demonstrator's continued presence. Just this week in several cities, notably Oakland and Atlanta, local governments have broken up the encampments by force, not without casualties. Often this use of force has been justified by saying that the protestors have 'made their point'. While the doggedness of the protestors has largely been a virtue until now, the public could tire of the 'occupying' theme before long, especially given the sheer inconvenience to local residents some of the larger protests have entailed. The question however, is how can the movement continue in a form that doesn't heighten tensions with the authorities further but isn't seen as a retreat and the end of the entire campaign?
I'd suggest taking a leaf out of the Tea Party's book and taking their campaign model to heart. Married with genuine populism, it could alter the nature of public debate in the US over the next few years even more dramatically than the Tea Party has over the last two. Lets take a look at what they did-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_from_America
Emulating the example of the Republican's 1994 midterms victory, which was notable for its 'Contract with America' championed by then Republican congressman Newt Gingrich. In 2010 the Republicans did it again with their 'Contract from America'. It is notable for its simplicity, how extraordinarily far-right its positions are, and the grassroots process by which it came about. It started with the creation of a website in mid-2009, just a few months after the Tea Party began, where any Tea Party activists could make suggestions for the 'Contract'. After a few months of this, during which the it received significant press coverage, hundreds of thousands of people had voted on the suggested ideas. Finally, with the cooperation of various conservative advocacy groups and Republicans in congress, the most popular ideas were presented at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2010 and voted on, leaving a list of the top ten which were soon basically adopted by the mainstream Republican Party and continue to be the basis for their policies today.
That my friends, is how you get things done in a democracy. Protesting can be very useful in getting a point across, but without proper coordination even a politically popular movement can struggle to get off the ground. It is also notable that during and after this whole process and leading up to the 2010 midterms Tea Party protests continued nationwide (culminating in the 'Restoring Honor Rally' in Washington D.C. in August 2010), so don't worry, there'll still be plenty of opportunities to protest against corporate greed in future. If you go to the Occupy Wall Street Facebook page (which by the way recently passed 100,000 likes) one of the notes on the page, titled 'Demands' lists just that, a list of demands that appears to have been written up by a rather small group of activists. At the bottom of the note it urges you to 'Demand and Distribute' the list. This method of doing things seems completely backwards, people should not be being asked to distribute those demands, but to contribute to them.
I'd suggest organising, starting right now, a major Progressive Political Action Conference early next year. Just as the Republicans are nominating which lunatic candidate they want to take on Obama next November, progressive activists countrywide can be voting on a platform for the Democrats and, hopefully, President Obama to embrace later that year. Just as the Tea Party formed their own Congressional Caucus which after the midterms came to include 62 members of the House and 4 senators, Occupy Wall Street could either form its own 'Occupy' caucus of expand the already existing Progressive Caucus. In the meantime we should be taking votes, hopefully with millions of people participating over the course of a few months, on what concrete policy objectives Occupy Wall Street seeks to achieve. The 'occupation' of city centre's across the county needn't end completely, but can take place intermittently. Occupy them on the weekends for instance, camping overnight from Saturday morning to Sunday evening. The Tea Party over the last two years has staged its biggest protests, with tens of thousands of people attending in some cities, on Tax day, April 15th. We need to choose a day, or several days, for the Occupy protests to flex their muscle fully over the next year. May I suggest September 15, the anniversary of Lehman Brother's collapse in 2008? Or August 27th, the day of the Republican's National Convention next year? All that is needed is several days next year when millions of Americans can briefly occupy every major city centre in the country, and even more importantly 'occupy' the attention of the media and everyone in Washington.
One thing everyone supporting Occupy Wall Street should remember is that this isn't quite the Arab Spring. The US may have fallen to 17th place on the Democracy Index behind the Czech Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index#2010_rankings, but it is still, despite the hype, a full democracy. A people's revolt may be quite badly needed against Wall Street, the tax-evading rich and their cronies in Washington, the military-industrial complex, the Pharmaceutical lobby, the Prison-industrial complex and the political paralysis in Washington. But revolts needn't be violent, lets give the political process one more chance shall we? And this time, without Wall Street and Washington hijacking and running the show, maybe we can get some serious things done. We need to send out a message to Fox News, the Republican party and every other anarchist conservative stain on the American dream today. Lets make them end up regretting how far they've pushed the American people, and hopefully Occupy Wall Street will be looked back on by historians as a genuine once in a generation people's revolt by the dispossessed many against the despotic few, before things got too out of hand and the United State's risked slipping into a state of stagnation and decline.
Sunday, 7 August 2011
Top 10 Real Time with Bill Maher Monologues
Since I started watching his show in mid-2010 Bill Maher has been my political hero. Forget Michael Moore or even Jon Stewart, Maher gets my vote for the best pundit on American television.
If you've never seen his show 'Real Time with Bill Maher' it airs on HBO Friday nights at 10pm. It isn't broadcast in Australia however so I've been watching it from a few different sources. You can download the audio of every episode here http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/real-time-with-bill-maher/id98746009
Otherwise http://www.mediaite.com/ usually has some of the highlights from each week's show and there are plently of good clips on youtube.
Maher ends his show with a segment called 'New Rules' which he uses as a platform to analyse and satirize American politics and culture. His monologues are often outrageously funny and absolutely spot-on. Enjoy!
10. On the usefulness of the Republican Party (4.6.11)
9. On global warming skepticism (4.6.10)
8. On the innaccuracy of think tanks (20.10.06)
7. The American people's love of socialism (29.7.11)
6. Most Americans are dumb and uneducated (4.9.09)
5. On France's system of government (4.5.07)
4. Stupidest State in America competition (highlights) (28.5.10)
3. Democrats are the new Republicans (19.6.09)
2. Bill Maher as a Tea Bagger (23.4.10)
1. On the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (26.3.10)
If you've never seen his show 'Real Time with Bill Maher' it airs on HBO Friday nights at 10pm. It isn't broadcast in Australia however so I've been watching it from a few different sources. You can download the audio of every episode here http://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/real-time-with-bill-maher/id98746009
Otherwise http://www.mediaite.com/ usually has some of the highlights from each week's show and there are plently of good clips on youtube.
Maher ends his show with a segment called 'New Rules' which he uses as a platform to analyse and satirize American politics and culture. His monologues are often outrageously funny and absolutely spot-on. Enjoy!
10. On the usefulness of the Republican Party (4.6.11)
8. On the innaccuracy of think tanks (20.10.06)
7. The American people's love of socialism (29.7.11)
6. Most Americans are dumb and uneducated (4.9.09)
5. On France's system of government (4.5.07)
4. Stupidest State in America competition (highlights) (28.5.10)
3. Democrats are the new Republicans (19.6.09)
2. Bill Maher as a Tea Bagger (23.4.10)
1. On the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (26.3.10)
Sunday, 10 July 2011
30 seconds of Social Networking in 50 years time
Wrote this up on a whim, it's a short story that briefly covers some of my thoughts on where social networking, the internet, technology and culture in general are headed. Its very compact so read the notes at the end.
‘This game sux’ Anh Dung thought*. Within seconds over 50 likes had appeared beside the text of his thought that had just appeared in his public display.*
‘Wot u playing?’ Radena, his on-again off-again girlfriend for the last month*, asked. Anh opened up Radena’s visual screen*, he could see she had her VR goggles on too and was sitting on a train, it looked pretty packed, he didn’t bother checking her tracker* to see what line she was on. Her online tab* was private at that moment too, she might have been looking at porn* but he couldn’t know for sure.
‘COD VR3*’ he replied.
‘Y’s it suc?’ Radena asked, she opened up Anh’s VR tab and saw that in the game he was running through an underground corridor, he had Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ playing loudly, over which screams and explosions could be heard in the distance.
‘Its got the same glitch as the last game, when ur firing the flamethrower in the rain the raindrops drop right through it’
‘Instead of evaporating?’
‘Y’. ‘Hey’ he added, ‘is that Marziya sitting beside u?’
‘Y’ she replied, she turned her head around slightly so Anh could see Marziya sitting on the train’s window seat better.
‘Can u ask her if she wants to play COD later?’
Anh didn’t bother opening Radena’s audio screen to hear what they said. He could see Marziya turning to face Radena and her expression as Radena asked her. After what seemed like an age to someone used to people sharing their thoughts almost instantaneously she got back to him.
‘N, she’s got tutor’
‘VR or R?’*
Again the wait.
‘R, y?’
‘No reason’
Mohammed chimed in on his earlier thought, ‘I don’t think the flames r hot enough to do that dude’. 20 people instantly liked his status.
Anh, still busy killing Nazis with the flamethrower in the VR game, opened another tab and queried Wikipedia’s problem solving program*. A second later it came back with the answer. Anh linked it to Mohammed, who he could see by opening up his screen was at home in his dining room plugged into his old Flexi. Opening up Mohammed’s VR display it looked like he was sitting in the virtual audience* of some TV talk show Anh didn’t recognise.
‘Here dude, Wikisolver says they should evaporate’
‘Wikisolver’s rubbish, never trust anything that’s free’ Mohammed replied.
‘Ur right, I don’t trust your mum’. Over 100 people liked this, Anh guessed he didn’t even know half of them. Probably random Sudanese kids who’d only had the internet for 6 months*.
Mohammed’s stress meter* spiked slightly, he blocked Anh’s last comment from his parents so they wouldn’t see it the next time they logged in.
‘Whatever’ Mohammed said, then closed his tab to Anh, who had just burned a virtual Goebbels to a crisp.
Radena sent Anh a private message ‘wanna come over tomoz?’
Anh didn’t skip a beat, ‘Y’ he replied as he stepped over Goebbels flaming corpse.*
Radena opened both their schedules and saw he was doing nothing after 5pm the next day. ‘Come by my house about 7?’ she asked.
‘Y’ Anh repeated.
She opened up Anh’s VR game and blew him a kiss. Anh felt it gently on his lips as he ducked behind a wall.
‘C u’ she said.
‘K’ Anh replied as he leapt up and fired the flamethrower directly into Hitler’s face. The Fuhrer screamed in pain before the game ended and a message came up congratulating him on having won the Second World War within his record time.
Anh took his VR goggles off and stood up from the chair in his bedroom he’d been sitting on, he could smell dinner cooking.
*Why bother saying things out loud? Already scientists can tell very broadly what someone is thinking about (or at least how they’re feeling about something) by scanning their brain and seeing what areas exhibit different amounts of activity. Give it 50 years and mindreading technology should be all the rage. The massive potential downsides I won’t cover here though.
*More people online, more time spent online, ergo I think the experience will be a lot more intense and a lot more of whatever ‘likes’ evolve into will be bandied around. Here his 'public display' is just a general name for what could be his Facebook wall.
*I imagine life will be a lot more fast-paced and flexible, including relationships.
*In this case Radena’s ‘visual screen’ is a display of what she is actually seeing (or would be seeing if she wasn't wearing what I have clumsily called ‘VR goggles’, no doubt the next Steve Jobs will give them a fancier name then that). So what I mean by that is that there is a small camera in her goggles facing forwards, looking out at everybody else on the train. We already have CCTV cameras on trains and people can video chat over their laptops on Skype, no doubt they’ll soon have penetrated every aspect of our lives.
*Already people frequently update their location on their facebook status, why not just share your location with select friends all (or most of) the time so they can check where you are anytime?
*Her ‘online tab’ is what she is looking at online through the goggles. There would be displays in front of her eyes whose layout probably won’t change dramatically from computer screens today.
*Give it 40 more years, girls will be looking at porn too, I guarantee you. Equality’s a great thing.
*(Call of Duty Virtual Reality 3)
*Virtual Reality Tutor or real life tutor, the two have become less obviously separable
*Wiktionary, Wikileaks, Wikifashion, why not another Wiki? We already have Wikianswers where users can submit and answer questions. In this case ‘Wikisolver’ is a program that does the same thing but acts as an advanced search engine, where, instead of merely searching for a word or phrase, you ask it a question, even quite a complex one, and it will scour the internet looking for a good answer. This next step in cyberspace should make us even lazier then we are now.
*We already have chatrooms, we can have VR audiences to live TV shows too. ‘The Daily Show’ might in future have 200 people in its studio audience, 5,000 people in its VR audience (who might perceive that they are sitting at a seat in the studio and are displayed on a screen behind the audience or something, though they’re not really there as a hologram or anything, that’s Star Wars you’re thinking of) and millions more merely watching the show on their computers (TVs are already becoming obsolete).
*The internet will eventually spread to Africa’s youth, 20 years ago no one though China would have hundreds of millions of internet users by now.
*Stress meter. Already having health insurance and wearing seat belts in compulsory and millions of people wear glasses or braces. How soon before people have medical devices implanted in their bodies to constantly monitor their health to make sure they’re nice and healthy? This could be greatly expanded upon. Maybe I’ll write some sequels?
*Graphic video game violence, now completely indistinguishable from the real thing in Virtual Reality. Suck on that concerned parent’s councils!
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