Our Angst

“Oh, How Unrevealing Our Angst Is”

Peter Schultz

February 4, 2011

In the latest edition of the Provoc, what passes for a newspaper at Assumption College, Mr. Jeff Starr has written an impassioned piece criticizing “liberals”, unnamed, for criticizing Sarah Palin and other conservatives claiming that their, that is, the conservatives’, rhetoric is to blame for the shooting in Tucson of recent vintage. “If one wants to blame an entire political movement or political rhetoric for an action of one man with the ultimate goal of silencing people, one is an enemy of the First Amendment, and the same goes for throwing the Second Amendment away.” So writes Mr. Starr.

Apparently, Mr. Starr thinks that his argument distinguishes him from his “liberal” counterparts and, as a result, his politics is different, even better, than the politics of those “liberals.” However, I would and will assert that Mr. Starr is engaging in the same kind of analysis as those “liberals” he is so worked up about. That is, both Mr. Starr and those “liberals” analyze the Tucson shootings in a way that makes them sui generis or a one-off event.

The “liberals” that so exorcise Mr. Starr argue that the shooting in Tucson can or should be blamed on the rhetoric of the likes of Sarah Palin and other conservatives. Palin, it was pointed out quite frequently, had used “crosshairs” to “target” certain congressional districts where some politicians needed, in Palin’s mind, to be defeated. Of course, to me as to Mr. Starr, this is quite absurd, as absurd as those who argued years ago that the two people guilty of burning down a house had done so because of an episode on Beavis and Butthead or as absurd as those who argue and argued that John Hinckley tried to assassinate President Reagan because he watched a movie too many times or as absurd as those who argue that Mark Chapman shot John Lennon because he read The Catcher In the Rye. Contrary to what both “liberals” and “conservatives” say or think, Sarah Palin has virtually no power to influence behavior in this country, to say nothing of being powerless to motivate a young man to try to assassinate a congresswoman. No one, not even her own children apparently, pays much attention to what Sarah Palin says and this includes especially the young or the crazy.

But in the same way that the “liberals” try to turn Tucson into a one-off event, an anomaly, to be blamed on a particular person or persons and, therefore, of no real importance to how we live our lives, Mr. Starr does the same thing. What happened in Tucson was the “action of one man,” and a man who was “by all accounts a lunatic.” Ok, there you have it, end of story, no reason to think further about what happened in Tucson as it was the result of the actions of lunatic. Let’s just get him into a mental hospital or prison and be done with it.

Now we Americans – and others – do this all the time. It is how we makes those things we don’t want to think about disappear. We did it with the Vietnam War and we did it with the presidential scandals of JFK, LBJ, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George Bush….with Obama waiting in the wings I suspect. Nothing about our foreign policy led us into an inhumane and criminal war in Vietnam but, rather, just a series of mistakes made by particular individuals at a particular time. Nothing is wrong with the institution of the presidency but, rather, each of the above named presidents was flawed and those flaws led to the scandals of their administrations. Similarly, nothing happened in Tucson that we really need to think about, as those events tell us nothing about how we are living as a people. And, here, both the “liberals” and Mr. Starr are in agreement and we continue on our chosen road, blissfully ignorant of what we are really doing or where we are really going.

Homelessness and Veterans

I like to read the Provoc because that way I know what is going on at Assumption College and, to a certain extent, what students, some students, usually the "upbeat" and "proactive" ones, are thinking. In the last issue, two articles caught my eye, an article about students pretending to be homeless to raise "awareness" of that phenomenon and an article about Veterans' Day and the activities around it.

I must confess that I was unimpressed by both activities. First, regarding homelessness. Well, to think that being homeless can be simulated by spending one or two nights sleeping in boxes on campus is, well, ludicrous. Why on campus? Why not go where the real homeless are for a weekend and hang out there? "Too dangerous," you say? Ah, yes, it is too dangerous there. But not here, nestled off Salisbury St. where the homeless, the real homeless, know never to tread. They know not to tread here because they know that is not allowed. Hence, it seems fair to conclude that those students were merely playing at homelessness, just like they use to "play house" in their much younger years. Oh, how quaint. How rewarding.

But someone will say: "Schultz, why do you belittle these activities that are so idealistic?" Precisely because they are "idealistic" - which means unrealistic or meaningless. They are "feel good" activities that have nothing to do with homelessness at all. Those involved are in fact delusional and their greatest delusion is thinking they have actually experienced homelessness. But in reality they remain just college students who thoughtlessly pretend to simulate an experience in order to feel good. It is, actually, a lot like going to the mall - only colder and darker!

And then the veterans. Oh yes, everyone is "for" veterans these days. It is a required aspect of our "patriotism" today, like "supporting the troops." Even President Cesareo got on board, waxing eloquent about the importance of "remembering" veterans, those who are serving now, those who have served, and those who died while serving. Fine thoughts indeed. But a question for the President and others: Will you encourage your children to become warriors? I don't mean: "Well, if they want to, I will support them." No, I mean: "It is your duty and I expect that you will serve your country in the military." Of course, if you do say that, be prepared to answer the question: "Why didn't you serve your nation militarily?" Most of my friends in graduate school supported the Vietnam War. But did they serve? No. They had more important things to do - they went to grad school to read the "great books."

As the brother of one of those dead veterans being praised [Charles J. Schultz, 2d Lt., USMC, KIA June 3, 1967], let me say that I have no interest in your sympathy or your praise. Really, I don't. I don't need it and I don't want it. What I want is for you to direct your actions at those, like Presidents Bush and Obama, who send our troops to fight un-necessary wars, wars based on lies and deception, wars that drag on and on because they cannot be "won." Defeating the aggressors in Iraq is impossible because Iraqis cannot invade Iraq, just as the Vietnamese could not invade Vietnam. We might be able to subjugate Iraq and the Iraqis, but this is not "winning a war." Winning a war means defeating an enemy while subjugating a country is a completely different kind of project. To lose sight of the difference leads to madness, the kind of madness evident in Vietnam when an American officer claimed: "We had to destroy the village to save it." Or when Ronald Reagan [not yet president] said that "We should obliterate North Vietnam, pave it, and turn it into a parking lot."

You want to honor veterans? Then honor them by acting to prevent their senseless deaths and injuries, by acting to ensure that those who die do not die in vain, that is, in un-necessary wars. Or better yet: If you are really serious in your praise of veterans, become one. This will not feel as good as "remembering" them - trust me, as a veteran I know - but at least you just might appreciate the real meaning of "sacrifice." That is you will - if you live.

More Political Debate

First from my friend and colleague:
Peter, I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what happened under the Reagan administration, and consequently don't see it as a paradigm shift away from the FDR model that I do. The government grew, but it was largely the military that grew, not the social programs that began with FDR. At most those held steady, but in many cases were cut. I furthermore think the grand strategy was to set the stage to cut them more. You remember "trickle down" economics; same thing repeated to a greater degree under Bush. This consisted, as you know, of massive tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations with the idea that that money would be invested in business (and not in art works and other such non-productive investments, as it often was), and when business was stoked, the riches generated by the now more active market would trickle down to everyone. The pie gets bigger; everyone gets a larger slice. But I never believed it, and David Stockman, the architect of it, never believed it either. If you cut taxes significantly, and raise military spending significantly, well, you've got more output than input. To balance it out, what do you have to do? You have to cut government programs for what I like to think of as the real common good, rather then the common good Mahoney talks about. Paul Krugman has described this strategy as "starve the beast." Less money in, more money out in the form of military, results in a crisis and a justifitication for less money out to social programs, which Reagan and Republicans, if not hated, were highly suspicious of all along. There is a fundamental difference between the way government grew under LBJ and how it grew under Reagan.

My response:
The bottom line is, The government grew under Reagan and Bush II. The issue was an alleged difference between Republicans and Democrats about responsibility, individual responsibility. I claim there is no fundamental difference between the two on this score, that neither one is interested in genuine individual responsibility because that would necessitate a fundamental shift of power AWAY from the national government to the states and localities. Neither part of the oligarchy, Republicans or Democrats, wants such a shift and so both, using different means, fortify the national government, either through social programs or defense spending or some combination of both, which is what has happened because both parts of the oligarchy know it is in their best interests to maintain the status quo by not undermining their "indispensable enemies." The Democrats don't really dispute defense spending just as the Republicans, for all their bluster, don't really dispute social spending. Obama in Afghanistan and health care "reform" finally passed, and this despite Brown's election as senator. I would wager that if the Republicans win in the near future that health care "reform" will continue. Just as a Republican, Mitt Romney, gave Mass. health care "reform" when it was in his interests to do so [and supported gay and lesbian and abortion rights as well]. This is how the "system", their system, is preserved while we, the middle class and the lower class, are screwed. But I guess if you cannot see that we live in an oligarchy, if you take seriously that "liberals" and "conservatives" are actual enemies and not convenient ones, then you are bound to think that Reagan/Bush was "the problem" or that Obama is "the solution."

You know, it is basically an off shoot of Locke that we speak of "liberals" and "conservatives" as if they were real categories, and descriptive of the most basic political conflict. Whereas Aristotle thought the most basic and common political conflict was between oligarchs and democrats. Methinks that Locke wanted a disguised oligarchy - he called it "government" - because he thought the battle between oligarchs and democrats too unsettling and not "progressive" enough. Methinks we are living out Locke's dream of a disguised oligarchy, and the oligarchs are only too happy to have us think that liberals and conservatives are real alternatives.

G.K. Chesterton

A student loaned me a book by G.K. Chesterton, whom I think is popular among some Catholics with conservative leanings, which I kind of understand but only kind of, given what I read. I finished the book in two days, What Is Wrong with The World, is the title. And here is a passage which explains why I like this guy, or at least some of what he has to say. He is aware of the power of the oligarchy as well as being aware that the oligarchy is the Establishment, comprehending both "parties." This passage refers to English politics in the early 1900s but it could, of course, be applied to US politics today. Enjoy.

"And now, as this book is drawing to a close, I will whisper in the reader's ear a horrible suspicion that has sometimes haunted me: the suspicion that Hudge [read "liberal" or "socialist"] and Grudge [read "conservative"] are secretly in partnership. That the quarrel that they keep up in public is very much a put-up job, and that the way in which they perpetually play into each other's hands is not an everlasting coincidence. Grudge, the plutocrat, wants an anarchic individualism; Hudge, the idealist, provides him with lyric praises of anarchy. Grudge wants women-workers because they are cheaper; Hudge calls woman's work "freedom to live her own life." Grudge wants steady and obedient workmen; Hudge preaches teetotalism - to workmen, not to Grudge. Grudge wants a tame and timid population who will never take arms against tyranny; Hudge proves from Tolstoi that nobody must take arms against anything....Above all, Grudge rules by a coarse and cruel system of sacking and sweating and bi-sexual toil which is totally inconsistent with the free family and which is bound to destroy it; therefore Hudge, stretching out his arms to the universe with a prophetic smile, tells us that the family is something that we shall soon gloriously outgrow." [p.190]

Just one illustration from today. In today's NY Times [July 24,2010] there is a story of how the current superintendent of D.C. schools has fired hundreds of teachers who did not measure up on a scale of assessment recently created under Obama's "Race to the Top" education policy. Now, of course, Republicans/"conservatives" will like this because it looks like responsibility being enforced and if some lose their jobs, tough luck and besides this is what happens in the "market place" or at least parts of the market place. Ah, but Democrats/"liberals" will like it because it is "regulation," allegedly "real regulation" and, of course, they have no doubt that all these fired teachers deserved their fate because BOBs - Basic Old Bureaucrats - are never wrong. And just as unsurprising is that the article nowhere even hints at the substance of this "assessment tool" except to say that it is connected to "test scores." But then who really cares if this assessment tool measures anything real? This is bound to produce that "tame and timid population" that is incapable of protesting oppression. And, of course, the school children will get the message too. For real!

"A Myriad of Problems"

"A myriad of social and financial problems."

This is a quote from a colleague and friend of mine made in the course of an argument about American politics. My friend was asking me what I was going to do or what would I do about all these problems that we are facing, allegedly. I gave him some of my wishes - which are like those horses beggars never will ride - but than I said that he was trying, slyly, to control the outcome of the discussion by using the words quoted above because if I accepted his version of reality then I would, quite logically, have to accept his understanding of the kind of politics we should practice, viz., a big national government with lots of regulatory powers.

Well, as I have continued to think about this, I realize that I was on to something although I couldn't explain it very well at the time. Here it is. Thinking that we face a myriad of social and financial problems is (a) only way of looking at the world. It is a very prevalent way of doing this, and we all pretty much accept it without really thinking about it too much, if at all. But (b) - and this is the really neat aspect - it is this view of reality which has led to, contributed to, our current state of affairs even if one accepts that we now face a myriad of social and financial problems.

For example: it was thought after WWII that we faced a problem with regard to our highway system or lack thereof. Hence, after Eisenhower arranged an "experiment" to illustrate this "problem," we built the interstate highway system. Of course, in the building of this highway system we created more social and financial problems, just as the completion of said highway system also contributed to our social problems, e.g., the demise of cities as middle class people used this system of roads to leave the city and move out, further and further out, into suburbia. Also, systems of public transportation and mass transportation also suffered, such as the railroads and trolley and bus lines. So, by building the interstate system we created social and financial problems, even while we were thinking that we solving one.

If we had never begun to think that the old highway system was a "problem" that needed "solving," we would not have some of these problems today because we would not have interstate highways. Would we have other problems? Of course we would but it is not accurate to say that what we deem to be "progress" actually reduces the number of social and financial problems we are facing. In fact, it might be that "progress" such as this increases our social and financial problems. In other words, we now have "a myriad of social and financial" primarily because we thought we did before.

So, if we think and act as if we have a myriad of social and financial problems, we will soon have them and, hence, we will need a pervasively powerful national government, an inherently bureaucratic government, to deal with these problems and by doing this we will create more social and financial problems and so on and so on and so on. This is what I meant when I said that my friend was trying to control the discussion by establishing a particular and peculiar view of reality, from which one was led to conclusions he liked.

So ask yourself: Do we have a drug problem in this country? The answer would seem obvious that we do. At least that is what all of us have been told to think, no? Yes, it is. So, we then need a solution. I know: How about a war on drugs? That seems to make sense.

But here is the thing. When Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs, drugs were not really much of a problem. As one person has noted, when Nixon did this, in that year more people died falling down stairs than died from ingesting both legal and illegal drugs. [The book is: Smoke and Mirrors.] Now, of course, many years later, we still have a war on drugs and drug use is far more prevalent than it was then. Cause and effect? I doubt it. But perhaps we have to rethink how we think about drugs and their interactions with human beings. It might even be helpful not to think of "the drug problem" at all but rather of more limited and focused phenomena, such as the over prescribing of medications by some doctors for some "diseases" or "syndromes."

In any case, beware of how discussions are framed. Most times, if not all the time, the one who frames the discussion does so in a way that guides it to what that person thinks is the right conclusion(s). If we think we have "a myriad of social and financial problems" today, watch out. Because if we think this way, it is almost guaranteed that we will have "a myriad of social and financial problems" tomorrow.

Thinking About Politics

This is in response to one of my friends and colleagues with whom I am engaged in a discussion, suspended now, the purpose of which is to clarify my refusal to discuss on his terms or in his language.

You, quite reasonably it would appear, want 'answers' in the form of 'policies' that will address or 'solve' 'problems' of which you see a lot, even a 'myriad.' I now dismiss 'policies' as, by and large, (a) relatively useless and (b) as tools for control. I try not to think of phenomena as 'problems' because if I do than I have to look for 'solutions'. For me, this is delusional and, ultimately, leads 'nowhere' [it is a 'utopian' mindset literally].

Some simple examples: (1) Say crime is a 'problem.' OK. Solution? More police. Soon, we will have a 'police problem.' Or consider an alternative 'solution,' viz., prisons. Soon, we will have a 'prison problem.' (2) Say that poverty is a 'problem.' Solution? Welfare. Well, soon, we will have a 'welfare problem.' What to do now? OK, let's 'reform welfare.' Soon, we will have a 'poverty problem,' again.

Does this mean we do nothing about crime or poverty? Not at all. It means though that in approaching these phenomena we approach them as road engineers think about pot holes: Fill them in but don't expect that you will ever reach a point where you don't have to fill in pot holes. Or, to put it in a way that struck me as interesting, suppose there is a certain amount of good and evil in the world and that there is no way increase the amount of good or reduce the amount of evil. Sure, we humans can move them around, reduce the amount of evil in, say, the economy but that evil just moves somewhere else. The police and those who study crime have noticed something like this happens with crime: "Fight crime" in one neighborhood and, yes, the amount of crime there goes down. But that crime resurfaces in another neighborhood. Or we know that young drivers have more accidents than older drivers so some recommend raising the driving age, say, from 16 to 18. Guess what? Now, as has been shown statistically, the 18 year olds have more accidents than they did previously.

One result of the policy mindset is that when policies don't "Work", policy makers tend to up the ante, that is, endorse increasingly severe or radical alternatives in order to "solve" a "problem." "Hey, we are bombing them and they are not surrendering. Well, let's bomb them some more with bigger bombs or even with nuclear weapons." That will "work" of course, but then we will have a bomb problem, as we have discovered and are reminded all the time [e.g., now with Iran].

So, if you want to talk about policies, that is fine with me but I don't have a lot interest in doing that. If making policy is seen as being "practical" rather than "theoretical," then I have to say that theory seems to have more value than practice, at least as far as I can see. Or perhaps I should say that we need to find a different way of "being" in the world than the way we are now, because the way we are now does not, and maybe even cannot, work.

The New Deal: An Alternative View

“The praise that has been lavished on the New Deal had always rested, essentially, on a single specious argument – that whatever its faults and limitations, it was better than nothing at all; that driving small farmers into urban slums was better than no farm legislation; that a regressive Social Security tax was better than no Social Security Act; that Roosevelt’s ‘activism’ was better than Coolidge’s ‘laissez-faire.’ But these were never the alternatives that Roosevelt faced; they were the alternatives the two party oligarchies offered the citizenry, but that is another matter. Roosevelt was neither bestowing reform on a reluctant conservative people nor dragging it from a balky conservative Congress. He had done the very opposite. He had held back genuine reform from a clamorous democratic people who in 1936 had responded with overwhelming favor to his republican campaign talk. He had suppressed an unruly, reform-minded Congress by saddling it with Bourbon overlords. Every piece of New Deal legislation bears the imprint of that purpose; every political move Roosevelt made was subservient to that purpose, was deliberately calculated to achieve it.

“The history of Roosevelt’s New Deal constitutes, therefore, the largest and most detailed confirmation of the proposition I have already set forth: first, that party organizations constantly endeavor to block reform and blast untoward hope in order to maintain themselves and their power; second, that they are powerful enough to choose for high office those who are willing to serve their interests. From 1933 to 1938 the fate of the party oligarchs rested entirely in Roosevelt’s hands. Without his determination to protect party power and his extraordinary skill in doing so, it would have disintegrated rapidly – it was disintegrating rapidly. With one push from Roosevelt, the party oligarchs would have toppled to the ground. That Roosevelt chose to save them should not be surprising. The Democratic bosses knew very well to whom they had entrusted their power when they nominated Roosevelt in 1932. Had Roosevelt betrayed their trust instead of betraying the people’s, the evidence of that betrayal would have been swiftly forthcoming. The 1936 Democratic convention would have been a bloodbath; instead it was a celebration.

“That Roosevelt employed extraordinary means – notably the court-packing scheme- to protect party power should not be surprising either. In the larger context of the world’s political history, his court-packing maneuver is merely a humdrum example of duplicity. The annals of politics are crammed with acts of the bloodiest villainy taken to gain and hold power. As Gibbon famously remarked, political history is a register of little else. It is not the business of free citizens, however, to judge their public men by any standard other than those of this Republic. By that standard, Roosevelt’s duplicity was a heinous act of bad faith and betrayal. There is no doubt that Roosevelt saved the prevailing system of oligarchic power at some sacrifice to himself. It is no small for any President to accept a humiliating public rebuff as Roosevelt did in 1937. Such a rebuff is the stuff of heroes, however, though Roosevelt was not a hero to the Republic, its citizens and its liberties. He was the champion of the party system, a very different matter. In any event the party bosses repaid him well for his sacrifice by letting him seek an unprecedented third term and play a very satisfying role, that of a ‘wartime leader.

“Perhaps the most revealing remark every publicly made about Franklin Roosevelt was made by Lyndon Johnson in 1964. It was a remark which looked back to Roosevelt’s 1937 duplicity and forward to Johnson’s own, providing a dramatic link between them. The occasion, as Tom Wicker recounts in JFK and LBJ, was a luncheon for reporters at the White House to discuss Johnson’s landslide election victory over Barry Goldwater. Johnson quickly dimmed the reporters’ spirits. He reminded them that landslide victories are tricky affairs, as indeed they are to the party oligarchs. ‘Roosevelt,’ he told the reporters, ‘was never President after 1937 until the war came along.’ Knowing his task, like Roosevelt’s, would be to block reform in 1965, Johnson was virtually telling the reporters that hewas not going to thwart it by suffering rebuffs until ‘a war came along.’ He would kill reform by starting a war – and that is precisely what he did.”