I’ve been more than a bit irked with America’s permanent ruling class just lately.  You know the one – that core of political actors who operate in and out of government, keeping things from getting out of hand. I’ve talked about the foreign policy establishment in the Obama administration not being all that different from the late Bush II administration (or that of Bush’s father, for that matter). On the domestic policy front, we see more of the same. All of the major economic decisions are being shaped by Wall Street types, focusing on the health of companies rather than the well-being of workers. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the auto company bailouts. Obama’s automotive task force is made up largely of financial types, and their solutions reflect that experience. What the hell – we could have gotten THAT from McCain. 

Okay, here’s what doesn’t make any sense to me about this deal. We are literally pouring money into GM – not to the extent we’ve poured money into Citibank and AIG, mind you, but a substantial sum… enough to make us a major shareholder by anyone’s reckoning. We should be getting some manufacturing jobs out of this. We should be getting upgraded plants and new, more environmentally sustainable vehicles. Instead, we’re funding GM and Chrysler’s efforts to move production off-shore, further eroding our manufacturing base. This is fucking idiotic. Instead of taking a hands-off approach, Obama and his administration should be pushing these companies in the right direction, providing them with contracts for, as many have suggested, components used in wind turbines, mass transit systems, and other critical technologies for the coming decades. That would be consistent with the president’s campaign rhetoric; that’s what he should be doing.  

And if the car companies need additional financing as they retool to produce stuff that people actually need? Where would they get the money? Well, hell… aren’t we part owners in some major financial institutions? The fact is, some of them wouldn’t even exist anymore if it wasn’t for our massive infusions of cash. Maybe we should, I don’t know, direct them to provide some capital to expand industrial production in the United States, focused on useful stuff (rather than superfluous weapons systems). Yes, I know… that sounds an awful lot like central planning and socialism, but what the fuck – if we leave this up to the corporate boards and the financial mavens, what’s left of our industrial capacity will have vanished in a few short years, along with our infrastructure for research and development. Nothing will be made here, nothing will be invented here… and the majority of us will be living in Hoovervilles. (Too many of us are right now, frankly.)

So… there’s two ways this can go: the Hoover way, or the right way. It’s the president’s and the congress’s choice, but we have to help them make it. Time to speak up and speak out, folks.

luv u,

jp

I saw parts of the President’s speech at the University of Cairo this past week and I have to say that the symbolism of the event was striking. This man whose personal history embodies a kind of cultural crossroads and an international experience previously unknown in the White House – to see him make reference to historic wrongs so seldom acknowledged by Americans really puts the lie to that old “only Nixon could go to China” conventional wisdom. Sure, the rhetoric was, well, just rhetoric, and even as such carefully balanced and qualified, but just the same… what an odd impression it must have made on an Arab world so accustomed to the condescending ignorance and arrogance of Obama’s predecessor. I’ve got to think they think we’re goddamned weird, veering our little electoral pinewood racer from one side of the track to the other (and, doubtless, back again before long). Not hard to see why we’re hard to trust.

And yet, through all that swerving, cascading symbolism, the bombs keep falling, the drones keep striking, and the cash keeps flowing to no good ends. It is good to have a president appeal to reason and understanding instead of fear and intimidation, but to do this and not depart from the tactics of oppression will ultimately prove an empty gesture. We cannot proceed from the assumption that animosity towards the west in general and the United States in particular is based largely upon xenophobia and irrational hatred. Obama did touch on the U.S. backed overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected government in 1953, but that is only a fragment of our nation’s long and sordid involvement in that region. There are concrete reasons for that distrust that stretch back more than just the last eight years.

It’s silly to preach to Hamas about making concessions, for instance, when we’ve been spending billions of dollars a year for decades on the gradual Israeli takeover of that 22% of mandate Palestine that represents the only hope for a viable Palestinian state. And calling Iran out for threatening its neighbors is simply laughable – they are literally surrounded by the burned out ruins of our imperial overreach. It is this, more than a lack of openness, that breeds contempt towards us. That is much of what is being said by people in the Arab countries – good words, now let’s see some action. This doesn’t sit well with the likes of David Brooks, who describes the Arabs as ready to “sit back” and watch America force concessions out of Israel. But it is the people in Muslim countries in the middle east who have been bearing the brunt of these struggles for the past sixty years. They don’t expect anything to come easy. They just want us to stop actively working against them.

Can’t blame them, really. Obama’s speech was a good start. Now we as a global power have to follow through. 

luv u,

jp