Is That A Gong I Hear In The Distance?

With gas prices skyrocketing, jobs disappearing, recession looming, wars raging, and concern about America's direction spreading like California wildfires, any attempt to pump up interest in China is, at this time, a hard sell. Soberingly, China may play the largest role of any nation, outside our own, in this litany of converging nightmares. In making a sale, timing counts. Even Americans who dismiss China as no more than a far off dictatorship purveying cheap products will soon be watching a nightly NBC program from Beijing. The Olympics will bring the reality of China's progress into sharp contrast with our own national decline in ways that may touch the previously unimpressed. 

Why should Americans, with no shortage of their own problems, begin to pay attention to a country that, until 30 years ago, was populated by a billion peasants and a handful of autocrats? This page of the newspaper lacks the space to list all the reasons, but here are a handful worthy of attention: 

1. By negotiating away America's advantages in international trade deals, Presidents Clinton and Bush ceded China the right to a $256 billion trade surplus in 2007, now growing at $1 billion per day; 

2. By resorting to Chinese financing for the Iraq war, America has increased its debt from nearly $6 trillion in 2000 to nearly $10 trillion today; 

3. General Motors, which often seems to have lost its hunger for pre-eminence, sold more Buicks in China last year than in the United States;

4. China is successfully carrying out a national strategy of coöpting Africa's natural resources to promote China's growth and, in the process, shoving aside all would-be competitors; 

5. The number of Chinese drivers continues to increase by 30% annually (that doubles the base every 2.5 years) while China is aggressively pursuing a policy of replacing the U.S. as the world's largest auto producer.

If we didn't have to leave America to our kids and grandchildren perhaps we could ignore Thomas Jefferson's conclusion on the meaning of our current situation vis-a-vis China: I place...public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We need to sell ourselves and our leaders on the urgency of dealing with China in a way that protects our most vital national interests. We have recently been reminded that in a democracy nothing constructive happens unless we citizens push for it.

Where Are The Muckrakers When You Need Them?

While agreeing with Bobby Chandler (Oct. 26) that capitalism is the best economic system ever devised and that Michael Moore can’t cure its ills, I don’t share his optimism that we can impose a system of checks and balances to make it work for most of us. Capitalism’s headlong plunge to join the dodo bird in extinction is no longer disputable. Even the best economic system ever devised is fragile. With Gordon Gecko as their role model, the titans of finance have irreversibly undermined capitalism. These are a group of men so driven by self-indulgence that the continued existence of the world economic order seems a minor concern to them. 

Just 13 months ago we stood on the brink of economic collapse caused by the deranged avarice of wall street powerhouses - spurred on by misguided politicians -  who turned worthless mortgages into an international ponzi scheme.  In a government grab for a flotation device before going under for the last time, we gave hundreds of billions to AIG and others who used the public’s money to award themselves billions in bonuses for behaving badly. In recent news we learn that AIG is about to bestow another $198 million on its failed executives if the company chooses to ignore, as it apparently can, the government’s pleas for restraint.

In more directly  prosecutable criminal activity, we learn that IRS loses $100 billion a year in tax revenue because the super wealthy set up unnumbered accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland. The glue that once held the system together was the sense of shame that restrained would-be perpetrators.  Now that greed has made shame obsolete, there appear to be no limits to the mafia mentality that undermines our capitalistic system. Under performing CEO’s who lack accountability while earning 100 times as much their workers foster a tone of “anything goes as long as I get mine”  within their organizations. 

Those at the peak of the financial pyramid have something in common with those who run the healthcare industry.  They are among the most richly rewarded members of the business community, and they add nothing to their product to merit that status.  By buying one political party and making a down payment on the other, along with purchasing the appropriate number of congressmen, both groups acquire exemption from the checks and balances that might otherwise protect our endangered financial system.

Our words and our wishes will not bullet proof our economic system.  It is being plundered by plutocrats with a certainty that they will not be prosecuted. There are still great companies, but within the financial community their number is dwindling, and none are immune from the obscene excesses of those too big to fail.  

How We Doin', Adam Smith?

If a system can be manipulated to the benefit of those at its center, and to the detriment of those at its mercy, it will be.  Capitalism, by any measure the most effective and durable economic model the world has known, seems unsuited to today’s realities.  The threat of world economic collapse is not easily ignored. Pretending that our leading politicians and our smartest economists know how to deal with the current calamity has proven delusional. Capitalism-based economies have collapsed in ways equally obvious to curry salesmen in Mumbai, saki salesmen in Sakura, and shoe salesmen in Cincinnati.  Besides, events of the past five months have already transformed our system into something unnamed and unrecognizable.

For example, in an economy where tens of millions of blue-collar workers rely on manufacturing for their incomes, market forces and tax regulations have driven American factories to countries offering low-wage workers.  In a system designed to reward success, failed executives receive annual bonuses exceeding the lifetime income of most Americans, as interlocking boards of directors vote breathtaking bonuses for mediocre performance.  In an economy where high school graduates learn that the path to success is smart investing, the stock market appears bottomless.  Seniors worry about their children and grandchildren’s ability to enjoy reasonably prosperous lives while repaying debt their grandparents bequeathed them.  Capitalism’s most doctrinaire supporters propose bank bailouts, mortgage relief, and unemployment extensions. Huge numbers of America’s hardest workers make too little to afford dental work, a car, or education for their children (read Susan Ehrenreich). Most fundamentally, since 1980 the nation’s wealth has migrated to the top of the economic mountain, leaving an echoing sucking sound in the valley. Banks won’t lend, giant automakers threaten bankruptcy without government assistance, and the world’s largest insurance company accepts an $85 billion down payment from the government to repair self-inflicted wounds. Enron, it appears, taught us nothing.

But we are not here to serve the system. We selected the system to serve us.

To get here, we ignored the most fundamental principle of systems, economic or otherwise: no system can long survive predatory greed, graft, and corruption on the part of those who manage it. Of course this reality has been understood since the Bronze Age, so what went wrong?  Too many members of a mutual admiration society, the politically and economically powerful, concluded that any system that met their needs so admirably had to be near perfect.  To perfect it, they concluded, it was necessary only to elbow government out of the picture completely, and to make all forms of government service punishable as unworthy of rational people (i.e., themselves). A political party sold out to the nonsensical proposition that if you give enough money to rich people, they will allow some to fall from their pockets to be scavenged by the needy.

But we are where we are. It was all about money and how I get my share and yours too.  Reality requires us now to find a system that works or to lead very different lives than we imagined.  As our only viable model, the fundamental tenets of capitalism must be re-worked in ways that account for and control managerial tendencies which many of us deem criminal.  Techniques for divorcing politics and Wall Street must be devised. Draconian regulatory and oversight practices must be adopted to curb insatiable greed.  To ignore the depravity that led us to the brink is to condemn ourselves to a Sisyphean  fate.  Capitalism seemed superior to alternate systems because it appeared to do a better job of recognizing man’s basic nature.  Let us now dip deep into the well of cynicism to extract the required level of suspicion to cope with man’s base nature.

Oligarchy by Adjudication

 

The already vast chasm between how we think and talk about politics, and how politics really works, continues to widen.  The recent Supreme Court’s campaign finance ruling (Citizens United) reversed a century of law limiting the ability of business to affect political outcomes. But a conservative Court, out of compassion for corporations which long ago mastered techniques for circumventing the law, has abolished the few remaining spending constraints. 

True, corporations still cannot contribute directly to political campaigns.  But since a major portion of campaign funds goes toward advertising, and corporations are legally permitted – for the first time - to relieve politicians and parties of that burden, what is the logical outcome? Corporations have owned politicians in the past, but ownership was fluid.  The Supreme Court ruling authorizes direct purchase of politicians at all levels, and thereby transfers governance at all levels to those with bulging bank balances.  No doubt the interest of the wealthiest among us will be served, but we may be left with a form of democracy that makes China seem liberal.

In the short run, this seems to aid Republicans.  But Darwinian Democrats, fighting for survival, can undergo genetic changes as well.  In the long run, no one wins but those who agree with Ayn Rand that money is the appropriate arbiter of human survival.

Like the rest of us, politicians are motivated by a combination of  values and priorities. Nearly all holders of public office value power and position, and all see themselves as abler servants of their constituents than any possible rival. The only antidote to abuses – term limits – is beyond our reach. So America will, more than ever, be run by boards of directors who bankroll the campaign advertising of the candidate who best aligns himself with their corporate priorities. Ergo, America’s brief experiment in participatory democracy is in cardiac arrest. If you doubt this, ask John McCain or Russ Feingold.

We Have Nothing to Fear But Fear Mongers

By using their public platforms to shout the words “terror”, “terrorist”, and “terrorism” countless times in every form of media, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Rudy Giuliani turned America from a nation of confident men and women into a cringing and cowardly country in under five years.  We now plead for someone to take care of us, protect us, and deliver us from the bogeymen our government created. We’ve reached such an alarmist state that we refuse to allow transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to federal “supermax” facilities that have never known an escape.  These facilities house, among others, a man who has ripped out and eaten his victims’ brains.  Is he less intimidating than the 19 Guantanamo Uyghurs from Northwest China who are mad at their own government? Besides, don't we have a couple of hundred million guns to protect ourselves?

While irrational fear eats at the soul and undermines the spirit of otherwise rational people, it serves as an easily calibrated control mechanism for those who need us to behave in ways they dictate.  Only six members of the House of Representatives had the courage to oppose the bill prohibiting transfer of Guantanamo prisoners. That’s 1.4% of our national legislators who think they can keep their jobs if they put prisoners in jails from which there is no escape.  Is this reasonable?

We are told to cringe because these masterfully trained instruments of destruction mean to end our way of life.  Yet every training video we see from  terrorist camps shows them dressed in boy burkhas,  swinging on monkey bars as we did at my school in the second grade.  In addition they’re seen climbing a wooden wall that would  be laughed at any Army boot camp.

Cringing and cowardly people will no doubt submit letters in opposition to bringing any “terrorists” into our prison system, thus supporting the effectiveness of the Bush/Cheney/Guiliani mind-control techniques.

Bad Conduct Discharge

Comander in Chief George Bush’s Bad Conduct Discharge, to be conferred on January 20, 2009, is awarded to any member of the military whose actions are deemed dishonorable. Even the tiny group of myopic supporters who stuck with him to the end are now washing their hands of their erstwhile leader. There seems to be a consensus that Laura Bush, a woman of understanding and compassion, would have made a far better President.  His father, whom Junior has spent his life trying to impress, sees his own legacy evaporating in the miasma rising from the economic quagmire.

Time will heal the national humiliation he brought his country, but many won’t live to see America crawl out of the hole he dug.   Bin Laden’s attack on America will begin to dim in memory before the wounds left by this Presidency heal. But before bidding him adieu – fittingly, a French goodbye - we should thank President Bush for teaching every voter one of the great lessons of history: If we send small men to struggle with great challenges, we spend a long time regretting our choices.  Intellect in politicians is not much honored in America.  Now that we each personally feel the effects of its lack, it has earned a second chance.

Blagojevich is One of Us

December 10, 2008

Crude, mercenary, mendacious, corrupt, and delusional he may be, but Governor Blagojevich need feel no sense of isolation in 21^st century America. Is he so different from Bob Nardelli, the Bush friend who expedited Chrysler’s failure after his ouster – with $210 million in severance pay – from Home Depot? Is he greedier than Grasso, the NYSE head who accepted a year-over-year salary raise from $5 million to $180 million? Does he compare, either in venality, hubris, or recklessness with the $85 billion AIG executive crew who had the foresight to make their criminal corporation indispensable to America? Has he wrecked as many lives and as many futures and as many countries’ economies as the designers of the financial derivatives built on worthless mortgages? Has he failed so completely and over such a long period as the GM executives who sing “Hey Buddy Can You Spare A Dime” twice each month in front of Congress? 

Blagojevich can at least argue that his brand of corruption is a long-standing tradition in Illinois, whereas America’s Corporate leaders are still in the process of establishing their own brand of incompetence and corruption. His yearning for a $250K job is not much more than an update on the Spiro Agnew dream. Our anger at him resembles my enduring anger at myself for my eight-year-old vote for a man inferior in intellect, character and personality to my mechanic.

If such commentary imparts a taste of sour grapes, then let me dispel the notion that I’m feeling cynical.  Basically, I think we’re doing about as well as our species is capable of. We have, and we will always have, millions of selfless, caring, adult, compassionate and concerned citizens.  They are what holds us together as a nation and what, in the end, justifies our existence.  The undeniable reality that politics seldom appeal to people with these qualities concerns me only insofar as it limits what we might have become. But that ship has long since sailed out of sight.  

It is now left to us to fight the economic Armageddon that our political and business leaders have thoughtlessly triggered with their “bring-it-on” egos. In this cause-and-effect world, those few who retain a trace of conscience will be consumed by the insatiable greed that brought us to this awful moment in our history.

Challenging People of Faith

June 14, 2007

Dear Bill O'Reilly -

In your column on your debate with Richard Dawkins you say “People of faith should be challenged and think about their beliefs.” I accept that this important point and hope that you will accept my challenge by responding to a serious question. 

When saying they can’t explain the origin of the universe, scientists are merely stating the obvious: Our current knowledge is limited;  we are looking into this problem, but like many others, we have not yet solved it, and may never. That would have been the scientific position on the question of a flat earth prior to Columbus, a heliocentric universe prior to Galileo, or an expanding universe prior to Hubble. (Each of these men presented evidence not previously available.)  Scientists are not suggesting that the problem is unsolvable, nor are they suggesting it should not be explored further. 

As I interpret the position of most religions on this issue, they seem to maintain: We can’t explain the origin of the universe and we can’t abide not having an explanation; therefore, we’ve decided to believe, with no evidence to support our conclusions, that it was created by some type of Master Universe Designer whom we shall call God.  On this subject, no further discussion will be entertained. Then they built cherished belief systems around this concept and contended vigorously and violently with others who came to different conclusions.  These contentions frequently led to misunderstandings, intolerance, and, all too often, to wars and mass killings.

To the best of my knowledge, scientists wish to contend only with those whose evidence is not clearly substantiated, and they seldom or never cause armed conflicts.  Which would you regard as the more intellectually honest and socially effective of these two positions, and why? Have I stated the two positions fairly?

By way of autobiography, I spent most of my life as a tepid believer.  Since using my waning years to examine the evidence more closely, I feel that I see the world more clearly than ever before and am no less awed by its majesty and beauty.

[No reply received]

                                                                                              

Ladders of Opportunity

3-18-08

For those who believe that America has more to gain from seeking common purpose than from continuing to underscore our differences, Barack Obama has delivered the most important speech in recent memory. But it is not Obama’s intellect, nor even his eloquent delivery that we should focus on.  Rather, his genuine feelings and the real possibility of  bringing a towering level of character and judgment to the presidency compel me to take him seriously.  His focus is on issues, where America’s needs to be. His goal to create “ladders of opportunity that did not exist for previous generations” seems to me the only rational answer for 21^st century America. Is it even arguable that we’ll be a stronger nation if every citizen works to assure that every other citizen gets a piece of the action?

He appears to transcend not only race, but party politics, which alone makes him unique. I refuse to withhold my vote simply because he is not long in the tooth, does not see war as the answer to all our problems, and declines to campaign like an attack dog. For the first time in years, I hear convincing arguments that we may be able to rise above the pettiness that has triggered our national decline.

Is Safe Dangerous?

1-9-09

Did Bush/Cheney, the Lilliputians of leadership, keep us safe? There have been no tsunamis, no killer earthquakes, no meteor strikes, no flesh-eating microbes, and no terrorist attacks on American soil since 9/11 (whoops – there was that nettlesome gal named Katrina!). So if you choose to believe that B/C 43 had no responsibility for our safety prior to September 12, 2001, they get a big high five. But left-leaning intellectuals suggest that there were tea leaves (“teach me to fly, but I’m not interested in learning to land”)  that were readable by those with their eyes on the ball instead of Saddam’s neck.

If you feel no danger from the more than 70,000 uninspected containers that arrive from abroad each day, then why not move to a prosperous port city? If you believe that not one of the  500,000 immigrants who enter our country illegally each year poses a terrorist threat to our safety, then Arizona and Texas await your arrival.  If you think the Bush-smitten Second Amendment junkies whose homes are adorned by AK-47’s pose no threat to you or your new president, then why not go hunting with Dick Cheney?

Finally, if you feel that a nation plummeting into an advanced state of economic collapse is safer than the one that began atrophying from neglect on January 20, 2001,  then your picture deserves a place in a book published annually by Merriam-Webster under the entry “self-delusional”.

 

Virginia Tech

And yet another day of infamy for the Second Amendment worshippers. For  as long as man walks the planet, it is unlikely that he will ever have the ability to predict murderous rampages by seemingly normal people.  It is, however, self-evident that those rampages will involve more fatalities if a gun is used. And anyone – look at that word: anyone! – can obtain a gun simply by attending a gun show.  The NRA argues, as does the Constitution, that citizens must have guns to prevent the infringement of their liberties by standing federal armies.  Once that made some sense, but as I recall, the Revolutionary Army did not have tanks, machine guns, hand grenades, bombers, fighter planes, battleships, long-range artillery, laser-guided missiles, and an infinite supply of weapons of mass destruction.  Just how effective will my 60-year-old 22 caliber rifle or your  pistol, AK-47 and twelve-gauge shotgun prove in turning back forces so armed?  That ship has sailed. Reasonable laws protecting both gun owners and society are conceivable. As long as we close our minds to the possibility of a better answer, and our politicians continue to dance to the macabre tune of the NRA, Columbine and Virginia Tech demonstrate that our children will continue to pay the price of our neglect.

Forever and Ever

I’m sure I could get a lot more interested in the after life if I could come up with some appealing notion of what I’ll actually be doing through eternity. Eternal bliss sounds eternally boring. Absent a physical body, playing tennis or golf, boating, eating (no mouth or stomach),  reading (no eyes), traveling, playing bridge, having sex and playing with the grandchildren will not be possible. Cruising the Internet seems undoable, as does anything that’s not totally passive.  That leaves watching movies and TV (whoops – no eyes), and possibly reflecting on the creator as the only possible pass times.  But those aren’t my favorite things even now, so how appealing will they be in 50 million or 50 billion years?

Anyhow, the Sun will explode taking with it our entire solar system in about 4 billion more years.  If my DNA continues, I’ll presumably have several million relatives to talk to in the great beyond by then, but will we have anything in common?  Will they seek revenge for their baldness? It’s tempting to believe that all of today’s most urgent issues will seem trivial to them, so what would we talk about?

I won’t be able to fill my time worrying about things, since there’s nothing to worry about, no problems to solve, no existential quandaries to unravel, no bills to pay, no disagreements with anybody about anything. By now it must be obvious that my knowledge of the after life is nil.  The only thing I’m certain about is that my own understanding is at least equivalent to the combined knowledge of the Pope, the leaders of all Protestant sects, the mightiest ayatollah, the most brilliant rabbi, and Tom Cruise. However, some of my detractors are so unkind as to suggest that the problems I’ve laid out here are not issues that I will have to deal with.

Worthy Causes

It was actually a great Republican – somehow this phrase seems oxymoronic today – who pointed out why we loved Rocky, why Obama matters, and why Fox News doesn’t.  Since Teddy Roosevelt’s words can’t be improved upon, a direct quote is in order: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

However, I’m betting Rush and Bill O’Reilly can explain to us why these words do not apply in their parallel universe.

♥ Conventional Doggerel ♥

I memorize Michael’s and gobble up Gerber,

and feel I am getting somewhere,

Then Negative Doubles and New Minor Forcing,

Fill me with gloom and doom and despair.

Conventions, conventions, conventions all day,

I read till my eyes are in trouble,

And still when I’m asked I haven’t a clue,

What it means when I hear “Takeout Double.”

I’m  battered by Blackwood and so full of Splinters,

I feel I’ve been punched in the nose,

And given a quiz on that Lebensohl guy,

I haven’t a clue what “slow shows.”

So when my opponents stare back in pity,

While asking “what’s wrong with you?”

My eyes grow all misty, my lips go all twisty,

As I mumble “I bungled Weak Two.”

Though there’s a convention I love and obey,

Known as Unusual No Trump,

When I try to bid it the other guys yell,

“That’s not how its done, Mr. Gump.”

         I climbed a mountain named “25   Conventions”,

and looked down at the world from on high,

Then Pete told me “still, there are 25 more,”

And ran when I started to cry.

Though Pete’s a good teach I don’t understand,

When he claims that this game is all logical,

Deep in my heart I’m thoroughly convinced,

He’s just being all pedagogical.

Still I stand firm and seek to stay humble,

There’s no way my ego gets swollen,

I spoke with a nurse to halt my Reverse,

She told me “go clean out your Smolen.”

So day after day I play and I play,

And though it was never intentional,

I’m working and striving but barely surviving,

As my game grows incurably conventional.

                                                                     April 2009

Die Trying

Is our government too authoritarian? If you are a Tea Partier or a Republican (am I correct to distinguish between them?) your answer is almost certainly “yes”. I couldn’t agree more strongly. A woman no longer with us, Terri Schiavo, presumably shared our viewpoint, though she couldn’t have articulated it from that day in February of 1990 when she suffered massive brain damage due to cardiac arrest. Our government, including even the President, denied her the right to die with dignity during a 7-year litigious free-for-all. What I believe I have in common with her, and with  her husband, is the right to designate – or to have my loved ones designate for me – the conditions and perhaps the day of my demise.

Starting with the day my life is deprived of any meaningful quality, I will begin to despise my government for not letting me have the right to call it quits.   Someone elses morality and laws based on scripture deprive me of the right to deal with my useless body and my failed mind in the way I deem most appropriate.

If government, the church, and the medical community had less power, then all of  my most important decisions would belong to me or to relatives I trust.  I wish in vain for the right to die in dignity at the time of my own choosing. I yearn for the day when my country will be adult enough to discuss dispassionately the issues that Dr. Kevorkian tried to help us confront. The irony is that this will all come about, but not in my lifetime.

Irrelevant Canons

Religion appears increasingly tongue-tied as the Bible and the Quran find little to say about today’s most important moral issues. What do these books tell us about: wars - which ones are morally justifiable; economic priorities – how to slice the economic pie fairly; genocide – how can it be morally combated; child abuse – how should morality deal with the epidemic in child molestation;  education – what are the moral implications of denying quality education to the neediest citizens; political corruption – does morality offer a way to curb the damage done by out-of-control politicians; well being – how is it achieved by the greatest number of people (the core issue of morality?); genetics – what are the moral implications of using genetics as a tool to eliminate inherited diseases; terrorism – can the canons be revised to eliminate the rationale religion provides for some who wish to slaughter themselves and others? This is but a tiny sample of the vast range of moral issues unaddressed by allegedly infallible books authored with assistance from Higher Authorities.

While the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) Web site says that  “Abortion, moral relativism and mistreatment of others are the top moral issues facing America,” and the Pope echoes these thoughts, it seems to me that even if those issues were resolved, we would still have to deal with those in my longer list and many more besides. In part our religious and political splits exist because believers see these books as listing or hinting at nearly all truths worth knowing. Closer analysis reveals that a few of these topics are mentioned in passing, most not at all.

.

What is becoming ever clearer is that science and receptive minds trained in critical thinking have more to offer than religious dogma in solving the moral dilemmas we face today.  Perhaps those problems persevere because religion – arguably the most powerful influence in our society - remains so focused on safeguarding its power. Absolutism, endorsed by all churches all the time,  has little to offer in dealing with issues that can’t be solved by proclamation. Yet these matters demand our attention because while they remain unresolved, our view of the world around us remains morally blurred. 

So why are the canonical texts inadequate? Simply because when they were written, running water was an inconceivable technology, as were the complex problems that the future would bring.  Religion has dealt with this embarrassment by using strategies that could have appeared on Moses’ tablets in the form of “Thou shalt not kill, unless your government tells you it’s o.k.”; or “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, unless they are hostile, then you may torture them.” Such wholesale revisionism has forestalled the disappearance of the church, yet it falls short of providing the moral clarity so desperately needed.

Could we look to science to help answer moral questions?  Thoughtful people around the world are beginning to consider this possibility.  By discarding dogma we free our minds to explore solutions that religion-based doctrines assert we’re not allowed to think about.  We’ve gained some important insights in the past 2000 years about how to think rigorously.  Why not put that knowledge to work to improve a dusty moral code that seems so limited and  provides both solace to scoundrels and levers for manipulating the superstitious..

Afghanistan - A War for the Mentally Challenged

Our schools fall further behind, our infrastructure sinks into the mud, our ability to produce jobs plummets, immigration becomes more corrosive, our debt roars past the $13 trillion mark, poverty reaches all-time highs, and proponents of the dumbing down of America celebrate their achievements. No politician questions whether we are in decline, yet we continue to spend $2 billion a week to fight a war in Afghanistan on our way to our next war in Pakistan.

When last I looked, neither the Taliban nor Al Qaida owned an attack aircraft or a warship. Neither had a general or an admiral.  Neither claimed an armored vehicle or a long-range weapon of any sort. Neither had a ballistic missile program or a delivery system. Neither has the wherewithal for an organized assault on a foreign country. While both may get access to nuclear materials from Iran or North Korea or those rolling around loose in Russia, we are not militarily engaged in those countries.

Al Qaida will certainly hit us if they can, but do we solve that problem by fighting 13^th century guerilla warriors belonging  to a force whose most potent weapon is a bomb strapped to their bodies or one buried at the edge of a dirt road? In Iraq we spent nearly $1 trillion to kill one man.  In Afghanistan our expenditures will eventually reach that same level, but our goals lack even the pathetic target for which we so recently sacrificed 4,000 lives and America’s prosperity. President Obama asked General Petraeus whether Afghanistan was necessary. Have you ever been asked whether your job is necessary and replied “no”? We must focus and begin to serve our own national interest if our government can’t figure it out.

With more than 200,000 employees, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Defense, is responsible for protecting us against the zealots. Their $55 billion budget is spent largely on intelligence and their mission is to interdict attempts to inflict terror on the U.S. They are good at what they do and getting better. We must learn to rely on them.

While America is a republic and not a pure democracy, the voice of the people in these matters can make itself  heard so forcefully that we have the power to stop these pointless and futile wars.  If you doubt me, ask Lyndon Johnson. 

Learn from the Learned

While Finland’s cost per student for primary and secondary education is 40% less than ours, her students rank first internationally in math and science, ours 24^th. 100% of Finland’s teachers come from the top third of their college graduating classes, while the U.S. number is 14%. Korea, just behind Finland in most rankings, pays teacher salaries (with 15 years experience)  that are 221% of per capita G.D.P., the U.S. 96%. Finland stands just 1 point above the U.S on international I.Q. rankings, so native intelligence is no excuse for our ranking. Finland’s teacher turnover rate is 2%, ours 17% (2004-2005). Various studies reveal that high turnover rates are surprisingly costly and deplete the budgets of counties where they are highest.

Do any of these statistics point the way to resolving the U.S.’s educational crisis? Perhaps the clearest factors are compensation and society’s ranking of teachers.  In the top countries Singapore, Korea, New Zealand, Finland, and Canada, teachers occupy the top rungs of the societal ladder.  In the U.S., they fall well behind engineers, financiers, bankers, doctors, scientists, businessmen, manufacturers, and numerous others.  Many of us look at teachers and think “if you’re so smart why did you go into teaching?” We have a trite old saw that goes: Those who can, do, those who can’t, teach. That is yet another way for the tax averse to belittle the most important job in America. 

While Finland and other superstar countries may not provide us a silver bullet to fix our ailing school system, there can be no doubt that in their best practices we could find some helpful nuggets. If we do nothing more than boost teachers up the ladder of respect by a rung or two, and pay them in line with their responsibilities, we will begin to see progress.

Don't Publish Babble - May 2008

In order to save space (column inches) in the editorial section, all newspapers should immediately cease publishing conservatives’ explanations of their positions on political issues. Instead, simply list the issues that concern them without elaboration. How could that be fair? Conservatives’ positions on important issues need no longer be written down because they are unanimous, invariable, and widely known by all newspaper readers. Guns? Nothing better. Abortion? Evil personified. Change of any kind? Mankind’s curse. Separation of church and state? Obviously the founding fathers experienced a senior moment. Therapeutic stem cell research? God is opposed. Capital punishment? The Old Testament approves so what else do you need to know. Wars? If you don’t kill bad guys, the world will never understand how peace loving we are. The economy? The free market solves all problems, except maybe $4 per gallon gasoline and housing crises and environmental devastation. I could go on, but you probably see my point by now.

A recent letter – running to 15.5 column inches - from a conservative argued that America’s enemies do not deserve Constitutional protection. This argument might hold a little water if we had used our pea-sized brains to pinpoint who those enemies are. Of the 13,000 prisoners randomly thrown into Abu Ghraib at its peak, 10% are believed to have harmed America’s interests in some way. That means 90% were incarcerated out of ignorance or laziness, or simply because our troops were too rushed to check them out. Of that 90% who meant us no harm, a number are now committed jihadists as a result of their unlawful and abusive detention.

If the 775 Guantanamo detainees are the offspring of a late-night union between Beelzebub and the bogeyman as our government would have us believe, why have 420 (54%) been released without charge? Given this proven proclivity to lock up the guiltless, why is our government apoplectic about the Supreme Court’s verdict requiring adherence to the Constitutional requirement for habeas corpus? Is there a possibility that the evidence doesn’t support our President’s oft-repeated assertion that these are the worst of the worst? But even if they are, only our reverence for the rule of law protects us from the savagery with which governments of previous centuries (and some still) treated their citizens and enemies as well. Perhaps we should, out of self-interest, honor and trust the Constitution that made this debate possible.

Conservatives are certainly entitled to their own opinions, but since we already know in detail what those opinions are, why use valuable space to print the same thing again and again? Lest I be accused of unbalanced views, this opinion applies equally to left-wing liberal writings exhibiting little or no thought. Opinions deserve a hearing only if there is an obvious application of at least one ounce of brain power to their formation.

Who Won the Cold War? An Ode to 43

Tell me again who won the Cold War? As our government decided to alter the immutable in Iraq, and began feverishly shoveling our national treasure into the dust bin of history, the kind of  surges that matter took place in two emerging superpowers.  While China’s economic surge is so well accepted that success in this century has been ceded to Asia, it is less well known that Russia’s economy is booming, its middle class exploding, and traffic jams of BMW’s are a daily occurrence in Moscow. Doubters need to consider the 130,000 newly minted millionaires and the 300 hotels currently under construction there, the fact that it is the most expensive city on Earth, and the abundance of million dollar apartments. 

Meanwhile, our experiment with mindlessness as an approach to governing has failed, and with it, the even bolder experiment of a government run by and for the people. Not to worry. Russia and China are quite comfortable replacing us. My pessimism would be less profound if I had heard or read anyone who proposed a way out of the quagmire we were led into.  My beloved America, now a self-satisfied, geriatric has-been, managed to self-destruct in less time than the Roman Empire. Surge on, O Ship of State.

The Big Lie

A helpful recasting of an Einstein quotation holds that “everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”.

When it comes to national issues, the really Big Lie – we hear it every day – is that they are so simple that they can be addressed in useful ways by slogans or by adherence to an ideology.  In reality, complexity enters into even the simplest national debates because our goals, interests, backgrounds, beliefs, interpretations of data, and circumstances differ.  For example, should we reduce defense spending? If you are a politician seeking an answer to the debt crisis, it is hard to answer “no”. If you are an employee of one of the thousands of companies whose survival depends on an expanding defense budget, it is hard to answer “yes”.  Our awareness that a number of costly defense programs are unrelated to any Pentagon requests adds a layer of complexity to the discussion. Still more complexity is piled on by asking what indispensable American goals are served by spending, in 2009, seven times as much on defense as our nearest rival.

If  general agreement can be reached on the need to cut, then we encounter issues of greater complexity, such as what programs should be cut and when. What are the associated national security risks? How are our allies affected? Are the reductions politically feasible? How will cuts affect unemployment and communities? How do we mitigate adverse economic effects? What are experts saying about the cut, etc. 

But I’m talking here about the Big Lie, not about the Pentagon’s budget. The processes required to successfully manage a wholesale hardware business reflect a similar level of complexity. Bee colonies, weather reports, public schools, family reunions, science projects, sports management, churches, and beauty contests must all get the timing right, along with a myriad of large and small details, in order to succeed.

Complexity involves more details than we can comfortably get our minds around.  It involves nuances of cause and effect that defy detection.  And it often involves dynamic interactions that occur too quickly or too slowly to detect or to analyze and control easily.  When businesses fail, it is often because they misinterpreted some of the complex interactions of their enterprise. But feedback systems and other tools are available to deal with complexity. Peter Senge and others have written books about how to do it. Winning WWII and flying to the moon prove it is achievable.

To entertain the notion that great issues can be usefully addressed by the trivial thinking promoted in slogans and ideologies, then, is clearly unsupportable.  If complexity gives you a headache, that is the price of living in a democracy. But don’t fall victim to those who want you to believe that you are not up to analyzing difficult issues.  They knowingly promote the Big Lie because they assume you want smarter people to do your thinking for you. They harbor this condescending view because it serves their selfish  purposes, not your interests nor the interests of the country we want to provide unlimited opportunity for our children. Worse, they preach simplicity despite understanding the reality of complexity.  We call such people hypocrites. Their Big Lies shackle America’s progress because they encourage us to think superficially about our national problems. Patriotism, fighting for what is best for America, requires us to confront, deal with, and overcome complexity to arrive at intelligent, analytically driven decisions that work for a majority of our citizens. Vacuous slogans and ancient ideologies are irrelevant.

Because We’re the Bible Belt, That’s Why

Somehow the editorial staff of The Sun News has determined that the more than 375 (I got tired of counting) churches of Horry County are incompetent. Despite each area church offering Sunday School teachers steeped in the Bible, and many having staff with advanced degrees in religious studies, and despite the churches’ educational expenditures reaching millions of dollars annually, the deprived students of Horry County, The Sun News informs us, are receiving insufficient Bible training. One catches one’s breath at the utter absurdity of using desperately needed money to widen the spread superstition.

Meanwhile, Horry County ACT scores are plummeting. Perhaps science, math, English, history, or even the arts, would prove a more productive use of the county’s money.  Or, I could be wrong.  If what is needed is more prayer then the trends should soon be reversed.

Once the religious genie is out of the funding box, how does Horry County propose to keep Muslim or Jewish or Baha’i parents from demanding equal allocations? We can’t help our ignorance. We can help inflicting it on our children by not squandering limited funds on subject matter within easy reach of every South Carolina child.

Lightweight Ruminations on Leadership

I’ve spoken with a higher authority, and He told me I misunderestimate what a mess I’ve made of America.  Now I can’t decide whether to stay the course, cut and run, flip flop, or go negotiate with the terrorists. Perhaps it’s March madness. I’m so perplexed I might just fire some U.S. Attorneys to get myself back on track. Or maybe I’ll tell Dick to tell Scooter to tell some stuff he shouldn’t tell.  I’m facing so many tough decisions it’s hard work.  I know I’m the decider and not deciding makes me look indecisive, so maybe I’ll just decide to build a 20-foot high fence and sit on it. People ask me how many American deaths it will take before Iraq has all the freedoms guaranteed in, say, the Patriot Act. I say Mission Accomplished! Folks wonder if a Shiite loyalist like Nouri al-Maliki is the right man to bring equal justice to all Iraqis.  I tell them that I looked the man in the eye, I was able to get a sense of his soul and it was scary, but things could work out – you don’t know! Other folks claim there’s a mushroom cloud hanging over my administration – no, wait: that was Condi talking about the mushroom cloud hanging over Iraq because of those darn weapons of mass destruction. Anyhow, you get the idea. This is hard work. Not like being a PR guy for a Texas baseball team. Now there was a job!

Political Churches Not Entitled to a Free Ride

While religion no longer satisfies my spiritual needs, I respect it for the architecture and music it has inspired,  and for the good works of high-minded believers over the centuries.  However, now that a large number of churches have chosen political activism over spiritual leadership, and seem to have abandoned the role that earned them their unique status, the issue of tax exemption must be put back on the table.  Unions, also known to perform good works, do not enjoy tax free status. Companies whose products promote the public interest are equally denied the church’s tax breaks.  Charities perform good works and get tax breaks, but are too mindful of their missions to engage in partisan politics. Why, then, are politically active churches exempted?  This was clearly not the intent of the IRS when it defined “lobbying” as the very activities so many churches pursue. Section 508(c) of the Internal Revenue Code specifically states that churches may not participate in political campaigns.

Law suits and hush-money payments in recent years revealed that the church in America controls vast wealth.  Why any well-heeled political organization should be free of the burden of taxes escapes me, but I will not dispute the rights of those who apolitically employ their riches to succor the less fortunate. Unless, that is, they use that practice to conceal an ulterior motive of promoting an enraptured form of social activism.

Thanks to cover provided by the party that has found ways to exploit the church’s social agenda for sure votes, the institution continues to go unchallenged while  thumbing its nose at the laws of the United States. Are we serving the national interest by allowing the electorate to be bullied by those who deem their values superior to ours?  Those whose passion for politics exceeds their passion for Christ have forfeited their right to a perpetual free ride. Campaign if you must, but pay for the privilege like the rest of us sinners.

Brain Bashing

Mental abuse of a child, even when unintended, cuts deeper and is longer lasting than physical abuse. Teaching a child not to ask questions, to bow down to dogma and surrender his or her mind to self-styled "authorities" is to doom that child to a level of submissiveness inappropriate to the challenges of the modern world. "Don't think for yourself" is a slogan repeated only by those who hope to control others. The conduct that results from such teachings can be witnessed every day in the form of sectarian violence in the Middle  East. In America it generates indifference to the hypocrisy of faith-based politicians who mock our nation's most basic values when they plead for compliance with their superstitions. 

Reasoning, based on cause and effect, incessant curiosity instilled and nurtured by parents and teachers, and analytical thinking using elementary logical principles are the unglamorous but effective antidotes to this kind of abuse. They are also the essential keys to a healthy adulthood and a rational society.